Magpie's Recipes: photography

Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts

Hello from India!

Hope you are all doing great. I missed you! Thank you to all of you who wished and prayed for our safe trip here. Our flight down could not be more pleasant. The monkey was as good as gold, charming the Flight Attendants who took turns carrying him around.Though often he tried climbing over my shoulders which was not fun for me, trying to stand on my head to converse in very confident streams of gibberish to the amused co-passengers behind us!

I must confess I hardly missed blogging otherwise, these last two weeks that I was without the internet and all its attractions/addictions! We were busy travelling to my mom's and dad's homes in Kerala and enjoying meeting our large families, who were meeting the little one for the first time.

We have been marveling at sights like this:

He makes climbing coconut trees look easy

And rekindling memories

The old Amby that is about the same age as me. Wait, that didn't come out right!

And creating some new ones!

My flower obsessed little monkey

The little monkey is completely enjoying all the attention he is getting though I am hoping he doesn't get too used to it! He is also gleefully discovering such new and fascinating (for him) things like colourful clothes pins, ceiling fans (a-FAN-uh!) and crows (Kaa-kaas) and most of all newspapers ( shame on his net addicted parents). Everyone is disappointed that he has ignored their gifts of fancy toy cars with flashing lights and beeping horns and other toys and prefers rolling a big plastic bucket around and throwing news papers in the air and chasing bits of paper around the room. I am thrilled that he finds so much glee in such simple things- atleast at the moment!

Of course his mamma is more interested in all the awesome food. Oh the food! I have been FEASTING eating many wonderful meals like this:

Pearl spot (Karimeen) Fish Fry, Dal ( Parippu), Beef and Chinese Potatoes ( Koorka)

And cooking and baking and learning a lot from my grandmom and aunts and now that I am connected to the net again I will be posting some awesome recipes. See you soon with a recipe and not just pictures!

black and white wednesday: bagel breakfast

Canon T3i 18-55mm lens f/5 iso 1000

Hope you are all having a lovely week soaking up the summer sun! Friends on the East Coast, hope the mild quake you experienced did not cause any problems and all is well with you all. From what I hear it was more puzzling than worrying, so that is good. Here in California we experience mild tremors now and then, though I still have not got used to them and still panic a little. Just another reminder about how fragile life is, and how everything great and small is all in God's hands.

Here is a picture I took of morning coffee and bagels for Susan's Black and White Wednesday, a culinary photo event

I shot it in colour and then used the free online editing program Picnic by Google Photos to play around with various effects including fading black and white, 1960's, vinignette which gives it that darker edge as well as cross processing.

Since I am learning, I thought it would be a good idea to note down the camera settings mainly for my own reference. Not that anyone else would be interested! ( Fishing for compliments here. Someone please tell me my photographs are pretty and my camera settings are worth knowing.Thanks!)

Also, here is an article I LOVED on creating moods in photography using lighter or darker back grounds and controlling the exposure and light by Ilva Beretta, somethign that I am playing around with currently, overexposing or underexposing pictures with a +1 ot -1 to create a brighter or darker mood to suit my own mood that day!

Editing this post to add some GREAT news! I was perusing the awesome Xiaoulu of 6Bittersweets Wednesday Favorites a collection of photos and recipes that she liked that week and I fell off my chair when I saw that she had included my bourbon peach ice cream in her fabulous list! I am soo stoked! Head on over there and check out the collection and the rest of her droolworthy blog!

black and white wednesday

purple cabbage

More playing with the camera, this is for the wonderful Susan's Black and White Wednesday, a culinary photo event

balsamic roasted wild strawberries with greek yogurt

Each trip to the farmer's market that I have the great blessing of living just walking distance to, is like a treasure hunt. I am always excited about what I will find that day. A few weeks ago when berries ruled, where now there are mountains of peaches and nectarines and plums, I chanced upon a stall with tiny strawberries. The cheerful woman missing one front tooth, who had woken up at 3 am to bring this bounty to us, pointed out that this was the same variety of the regular larger strawberries, just those growing wild on the mountains.

I bought some of each, the regular ones and these tiny ones to compare. The wild berries had a concentrated strawberry flavour and tartness and crunchy seeds while the plumper ones were juicier, being fleshier and I actually preferred those to eat.

The mountain berries however, would be wonderful in dessert and jam, being incredibly flavorful.

small wild mountain strawberries

larger fleshier regular strawberries sliced

Both types were nothing like the tasteless ones from the supermarket. From thinking that organic produce was just overpriced hype, I have become a locavore convert! Seriously the difference in taste between something that is grown in small farms organically and brought fresh to the market to that which is grown on a large scale God-knows-where to look pretty and last longer on supermarket shelves but taste like water balloons is something you have to taste yourself to understand! So get yourself to your local markets or farms where ever in the world you are, if you haven't already!

I had grand ideas of making balsamic roasted wild strawberry ice-cream and cut up whatever strawberries remaining I hadn't greedily eaten ( both kinds) into a roasting dish with a tablespoon or so of sugar, a squeeze of lemon juice, a scraped vanilla bean and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and after about 8 minutes at 350 F in the oven I just about died when I tasted the sweet juicy warm goodness.

Forgotten was the ice cream and we happily ate it by itself or topped some greek yogurt with sweet juicy red spoonfuls. It would make a great cake or ice cream topping too, but sadly it was all gone before I could investigate further!

Roasting fruits is a great way to experience them completely differently. Adding just a few spoonfuls of sugar and nothing else even, while roasting or stewing with a little water on the stove top, turns fruits that are slightly tart and sour and thus untouched on your dining table into something that everyone will fight to finish! They break down a little and become soft and slightly jam like, releasing delicious juices.
I had tried this with peaches last summer, (and again this time in roasted peach and bourbon icecream) where the edges get browned and caramelized. Bananas are great to roast too, as are a lot of other fruits.

Am playing around with my camera settings and very slowly learning about exposure and the other nuts and bolts about photography. The awesomely talented and wonderful Xiaolu, Aparna, Prerna have been awesomely patient and not laughed at my embarrassingly noobie questions. Thank you!

I submitted the first photo to Food Pixel's fruit as core ingredient themed photography event. I am now liking this darker feel that I achieved shooting against a dark back ground and by reducing the aperture and also reducing the exposure bar by a couple of points, and further increasing the shadows on a simple editor like Picasa tho I need to look into a more powerful editor soon. This is new for me, after years of obsessively trying to make my pictures brighter!

For those of you who want to learn more like me, here is what I'm reading and trying to get into my small brain!

My Take on Food Styling and Photography by Xiaolu of 6Bittersweets
Food Photography series by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen
Understanding Light by Prerna of Indian Simmer
31 days of Food photography Tips at Learn Food Photography
Creating moods with Ilva Beretta
A highly recommended book is of course Helene Dujardin's book on food photography Plate to Pixel

Will update this list with more as I find them, but first, going to have to force myself to read beyond the first few pages of my tedious and boring camera manual :(

Just pictures :)

Yes I have been missing in action :( Just wanted a short break, which became a little bit longer than intended, but I'm back! So what's news with you all? For one, the most significantly for me I got my very first DSLR from the awesome husband and am spending as much time as I can learning how to use it! I have been cooking, baking and shooting pictures by the hundreds, just not blogging which I plan to catch up on stat, with something very exciting coming up in my next post :)

Here are some pictures I took (and the recipes will come soon, I promise! ) I have a lot to learn and am trying to wean my self away from the auto settings so any tips or advice you all have to share will be very much appreciated!