Mother and Son and Negative Space • December 5, 2009
Christy brought her son Ben to Food Not Bombs Saturday. She sat him a wheelchair while she was chopping vegetables, so she could keep an eye on him. She then took a break from preparing food to sit with the baby for a bit, in the church fellowship hall.
Polaroid Sx-70. Neutral density pack filter. Black Friday 2009.
Where'd you get those peepers, Mille?
Millie, Thanksgiving Day, 2009
That's the name of a 238 song, and that's what I feel like I'm doing at the moment.
Ummmmmmerz. I got a new job.
I've mentioned in the past on this blog (and most who read this know anyway), I began working at a photography studio in the early summer. Photography of rising high school seniors is DEF a seasonal thing and I had no promise of a job one "senior season" was over. Thankfully, they had another seasonal position for me within the studio, more of an office job (which has been AWESOME, thanks to my working with my oldest friend in the world every day.) However, it's a hard thing going from one temporary job to another.
I'll spare you the longer version of this story (involving two, nail-biting months of waiting it out and how I knew deep down in my soul that this was my job), but I am proud to announce that I am an employee in the field of customer service at Muddy's Bake Shop! I had my first training shift last night. So exciting!
My job duties include (but are not limited to):
Assisting customers at the baked goods case. So when you and your friends come in and say "I want one of those, one of those and one of those," I can help you with that.
Washing dishes. Everybody at Muddy's does this at some point in their shift. It's cool, baby. I don't mind pitching in with the dirty work.
Filling orders. Special orders are necessary for certain quantities or flavors of baked goods. I gots to help make that happen.
Making customers happy, in general. This part of the job will cover many different areas, as they arise!
Making sure the case is stocked with baked goods. I.e. If I see we're running out of the Prozac cupcakes, I gotta see if we have any more!
FROSTING CUPCAKES, APPARENTLY! This was my favorite part of my first shift in the bakery, and I didn't know it was something my position would allow me to do. I'm not sure customer service folks usually do that on the first night. But, as I informed the bakery manager at my second interview, "I know my way around an icing bag." And guess what I did for you? Took pictures! Of the second tray I frosted and sprinkled. The first one, eeeeeh, probably yielded some Capote cupcakes for the "pity pile" (I'd just called it the "poor, unfortunate ugly cupcake pile.") But I got in the swing of things with icing the second batch (the Pucker Up.)
I did it! Yay for Amanda!
I took this with my sister in mind, and she will know why. P.S. I don't have a new hair-do, though it looks that way in this photo...
The cupcakes I frosted, in the case. How special for me!
So that's a little update for folks about me, the owner and proprieter of Shoot With Personality. Waaa-hooo!
P.S.
My boss, the lovely Kat, was on Fox 13 in Memphis yesterday morning!
P.P.S.
I really love the Muddy's website and think you should visit it. The blog is especially fun.
P.P.P.S. I have never had such an outpouring of love and support from my friends and family as I've had since I began to seek a job at Muddy's. For those people and their support, I am truly grateful.
It's the week after Thanksgiving here in the U.S. of A, so it's officially the Christmas season. You may or may not agree with me on this point. But my friends Horatio, Jimmy, Chris, Tracy and I don't care what you or anyone else says. Christmas time is here.
As a side note:
I think I've missed my calling. I think I should be professional Christmas card photo taker. I literally go around taking pictures of decorated store windows and pretend like the photos are going to make it onto the front of a Christmas card. Oh, delusions of grandeur...
If the town in question is Jackson, Mississippi, I'd say that we ran that town last night.
Meredith, Eli, and I drove down to Jackson to see Jonezetta and Colour Revolt! A good time was had by all.
Click on through to the Jonezetta pictures!
I have a dear friend named Jason. As with most of my dear friends, I have asked Jason from time to time if there is something in particular he would like for me to bake for him. He always says, "White cake, white icing." I never understood what the difference between vanilla cake and white cake would be, so I began seeking out white cake recipes in order to sort out the difference. It quickly became apparent to me that there WAS a difference between white and vanilla cakes. But what was the best recipe for white cake? I found two that appealed to me, both of which are vegan (because I'm a really weird vegan-baking omnivore. Let me rephrase: I'm not an omnivore who bakes vegans; I'm an omnivore who makes vegan baked goods. Glad I got that cleared up...)
I decided the best way to get to the bottom of the matter was to just to start testing these recipes. Seemed like a good excuse to make some mini-cakes and start some taste-testing (PURELY for research purposes, mind you...)
Test one: Vegan White Birthday Cake recipe
I know I make this cake look goooood, but it was not quite what I felt it should've been. I'm pretty good at being able to figure out what I do or don't like about a recipe and then tweaking the recipe to be more to my liking. I thought the flavor was good on this, but texture wasn't right, the batter was too thin, and it just didn't rise the way I thought it ought to. I didn't eat half the cake and then take this picture; the layers were so thin that I had to slice each one into two semicirlces - yielding four layers. Yes, there are only three layers in the assembled cake...I had to do a taste test on the fourth semicircle! There were parts of this recipe that I felt were good, and which I knew I would keep in mind for future cakes.
Test two: Vegan White Cake recipe
If I had to use one phrase to describe this cake, it would be: old-fashioned. I hadn't realized what a difference using a solid fat in a cake, such as margarine or shortening, made in comparison with using oil in a cake. The texture of the cake brought to mind the types of cakes I'd have at my Mamaw Coley's house growing up. I'm guessing using butter or shortening in a cake is old-timey thing to do. As you can see, I didn't use white icing on this white cake. I KNOW how to make a good buttercream icing like the one I used on the first white cake recipe. I thought I'd give my taste buds a little variety by using the chocolate icing recipe that was given with the recipe for this cake. The chocolate icing was old-fashioned style also. It uses oil rather than butter and shortening like buttercream-type recipes do. It yielded almost a fudge candy-like chocolate icing. So sugary that you feel it's teeth-shatteringly sweet, but yet you want to lick every last drop of the icing off the plate. The verdict for this cake recipe: passable, but not really what I was looking for. The old-fashioned style of it was dense and, while certainly tasty, just not what I like in a cake.
Trial Three: Vegan White Birthday Cake, redux
I decided there were aspects of the first recipe I tried that I really liked, and the fact that it didn't turn out right just seemed like a fluke to me. I tweaked this recipe just slightly the second time around, using tried-and-true cake making techniques that I felt would improve the outcome of the recipe. Boy, was I glad I gave this cake another shot! I was worried that I had made a mistake when I halved the original recipe size to make it fit the mini-cake, so I went whole hog and made the full-sized recipe this time. It baked up beauuuuuutifully. I did have to add more flour to the batter since it was still thinner than I thought it should be. I knew I had had cake overload already that week and COULDN'T be soley responsible for disposing of this whole cake. I said to myself "What am I gonna do with this ginourmous cake??" Thankfully, it was the day before Halloween and the perfect excuse to decorate the cake and take into work.
We have a winner folks! The texture was wonderful, the flavor was outstanding, and it baked up tall and proud. I now have a solid standard white cake recipe in my arsenal!
Along with being a place for my photographic observations and AWESOMENES, I feel like the Shoot With Personality (SWP) blog is a place for the stories behind the pictures.
There are a number of places on the internet where folks see a lot of my photos, such as Flickr or Facebook. Most of my photos you see on here aren't exclusive to SWP. However, I enjoy the SWP blog as a venue for giving you behind the scenes insight into these photos.
For example? If you know me on Flickr or Facebook, you may see the following photo:
And you may get bits of the story behind this and the other photos of my friend Jason from this session. But you won't hear the whole story if you see these photos somewhere besides this blog.
Part of the story for this photos series is about how I and my co-workers sometimes have too much time on our hands and like to blow off steam by taking ridiculous pictures in one of the studios that isn't being used for clients at that moment.
Another part of the story is, there was this sign that was made by someone in our department as a reminder for another member of our team. Jason liked the sign and kept it for himself. It was good for a laugh. Then, I had this flash of inspiration before work yesterday, and let Jason know that I had envisioned photographing him holding the sign whilst wearing his prescription Ray Ban sunglasses. Killer. This is how it looked in my head when I thought it up:
I knew I would be posting these online at Facebook, as kinda goofy pictures for our friends to see. I upped the comedic anty though, when I had another flash of inspiration: I could say that the photos of Jason with the "Stay Calm" sign were photos for a public service ad campaign, similar to one running in Memphis called "Chill, don't kill." This campaign includes both TV commercials and billboards throughout the city.
It would probably be a better story if I could say "So I had this brilliant idea: I'll take pictures of Jason as a spoof on the Chill, don't kill ads!" and proceeded to do so. But I really didn't think of it until after I'd already taken the pictures.
Yet another aspect to these particular photos is the type of portrait session they would be considered if Jason had been one of my customers as a portrait photographer. It's called the "black-and-white" session (duh) and, along with the "white-on-white" session, is the only type of portraits I took during my stint as senior portrait photographer that I actually felt were "Amanda-style."
When I first began the portrait studio job, I struggled because all these studio lights and posed photos felt like the polar opposite to my normal, photojournalistic/documentry-style of shooting. Having to pose my subjects felt counterintuitive for me. However, there was something about the black-and-white and white-on-white portraits that felt like they answered the question "if Amanda were going to do pictures in a studio, what would they be like?" (not that I or anyone else have ever asked that question.)
It's been strange for me to be producing SO much photographic work all summer, but none of going into my online portfolio. This is due to the fact that a) most anyone who was a customer here was under the age of 18 and I'd need permission to post their photos online and b) the studio pretty much owns the rights to said photos, not me. I wanted to show you guys what I learned on summer vacation though. Which is one reason I chose to shoot the "Stay Calm" session of Jason in the black-and-white style. Jason's not a minor and my job doesn't own the rights to these! I'm free to show them to you!
Happy Halloween from Shoot With Personality!
I honestly cannot hear the phrase "Happy Halloween" without hearing "Mama this is Happy Halloween, to you" to the tune of "Sex and Candy" by Marcy Playground. Thank you, Jimmy Fallon!
