Sunday, October 05, 2014

Mini Batch Cupcakes

Happy Sunday!

I took a 2 day workshop at the School of Photographic Arts: Ottawa (SPAO) on food photography, that wrapped up yesterday. It was so much fun! Thank you G, for telling me about this course! The instructor, Adrien, is so knowledgeable and great. He really is a master of light and knows how to tweak things just so, to make them look better. The other students were great to work with. There were a couple of other food bloggers,  Louise of Kitchen on Fourth and Fida of Sweet and Savoury Pursuits, Deb, a marketing professional and Alex, a high school photography teacher! We balanced each other out well.

The first week was theory and practice: composition, lighting, what we liked and didn't like about photos, etc.. This week was more about production. We set up two sets and got to shoot and play around with the lighting.

Here's a glimpse:



I was paired with Louise and Alex who are in the photo above. It was great because we all had Nikons and could try out each others lenses. I got to test out a macro lens and now I really want one!!

Another highlight for me, was finding out that my (Dad's) really old tripod can do some really neat stuff! The instructor was all excited about it too, saying it could do things he had never seen on a tripod, for example part of it can unscrew and attach somewhere else so it'll be possible for me to shoot birds eye view with it. I can't wait to try this feature out!  He also said it is very light for what it can do. So that was really cool. Hey who says newer is better, right?

For Saturday, we were supposed to bring in some food to photograph. It was supposed to be simple enough to be able to play around with the composition. I couldn't decide what to make. I had already photographed fruit and tomatoes the week before and wanted something different. I decided I would bring in cheese and crackers and if I had time maybe bake something.

I woke up early on Saturday and decided to make some cupcakes.  I had received some great accessories for cupcakes for my birthday and thought they could be fun to photograph (Thanks T and P)  I am so last minute! As usual, I was frazzled and rushed. I had previously found a recipe on Pinterest,  from Yes to Yum  for a half batch of devil's food cupcakes, which I think is amazing. You don't always need 12 cupcakes and if you are like me, you will just eat them all.

Side note- I am not the only chocoholic out there. In yoga the other day - yes I have been going to yoga like it's my job and am down to just 4 classes left!!- the teacher told us about how she always used to think the " Cat/Cow" pose was called " cacao". She was wondering why it was called that and finally realized her instructors were not saying that, she had just misheard. She said that even though it doesn't make as much sense, she still wished it were called cacoa because she likes chocolate. Hmm so I am not the only one daydreaming about chocolate while on my yoga mat.. She is a pretty funny instructor and also talks a lot about coffee in the morning classes- "Imagine there is a cup of coffee.. now reach as far as you can for it"

Anyway I did not modify the cupcake recipe so if you want to make these, just click on the link above and get it directly from the source. I was surprised at how quick they were to make.  I didn't make the icing but can see from the comments on the site that it is really good. If I have more time, I will definitely try it. Instead I just used a plain white icing.  Here are some of my photos:






These were modeled on Martha Stewart's style- clean and crisp with white on white background 
Everyone loved this cake stand- thanks Patrick and Jane! 
close-up! 


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