Fake fire burning in the fireplace.  Mantel full of cake.  Welcome to a look behind the scenes of a food photography shoot.

And I’ve had a camera stuck in her face ever since.

(Whether she’s liked it or not!)

Location: University of Memphis area

Here’s the story: I saw a mobile phone photo of Ezra sitting next to his family’s Christmas tree. I knew immediately knew that we had to do a mini photo shoot to commemorate Ezra’s first Christmas. Because he is too presh. Too too presh. His parents were on the same page about the matter, and the rest, as they say, is history. We had a mini photo session  in his home, which was so great because I think little ones are sometimes more at ease in familiar surroundings. Plus, Ezra’s mom and dad have great style, so shooting in their home is extra awesome.

This smile? Ezra’s reaction when his daddy came home from running an errand. Love it!

I just love seeing this little family unit interact with each other. I was showing my mother some of these photos, and she said “Ooooh,  you can tell they love that baby so much. That makes me so happy.” I couldn’t agree more!

This might be my favorite shot of the whole afternoon though:

I just think this shot says it all!

]]> http://www.shootwithpersonality.com/2010/12/17/babyyyyyy-photography-ezras-holiday-edition/feed/ 3 http://www.shootwithpersonality.com/2009/12/26/food-pornage-simplicity/ http://www.shootwithpersonality.com/2009/12/26/food-pornage-simplicity/#comments Sun, 27 Dec 2009 00:04:59 +0000 araney http://www.shootwithpersonality.com/?p=506 Sometimes, I get so caught up in piping  fancy swirls of icing on cupcakes for aesthetic purposes, that I forget that there can be beauty in simplicity.

Yes.

Yielded from a day at Food Not Bombs in November.

The bike of my dreams…

Perhaps the most Amanda-appropriate apron there ever was.

Since I’ve had my Pentax K20D, I have really been missing the ability to do macro shots. For my Nikon D50 (my previous dSLR) and my Nikon film cameras, I have something called macro extension tubes to do close-up work. I mainly use this type of photography for my food photos, but it occasionally comes in handy in other areas as well. Essentially these extension tubes screw onto your lens, and create a distance between the film plane (or in the case of digital, the image sensor) and it causes the lens to focus more closely than normal (there is a more scientific explanation for this, but I am not well-versed in science or mathematics. Alls I know is that the tubes work!) You can stack tubes of different heights together to make your lens focus closer and closer – and it can get REAL close, folks, if you use more than one tube. I generally don’t do this because it’s just not my thang. However, macro tubes have really defined my food photography (there I go again, giving away my secrets…) I love ‘em. Both my new Pentax-mount tubes and the ones I used on my Nikon bodies (which, incidentally, were designed for a whole nother lens mount called m42 which I have an adapter to make fit on Nikon, but that’s another topic for another day) are manual focus, generic tubes. They’re cheap as chips. I paid around $10 for the m42 tubes and abotu $12 for the new ones I just got for the Pentax.

I thought I should bake something to show off/test out the new tubes. I made pumpkin muffins. I even tried out my new snowflake silicone muffin “tin” (not really a tin since it’s not metal, eh?) I sprinkled some powdered sugar on top to add interest for the photo. I say the new extension tubes work pretty well! This was taken with the shortest tube attached – I told you it’ll get ridiculously close if you put on more than one. Look how close just the shortest one got us!

Of course, the more closely you focus on something, the more shallow the depth of field is going to be. That means with extension tubes, your depth of field is going to be WHOA shallow. You’d have to really close your aperture down to get much in focus. I don’t want too much in focus, so I keep my aperture pretty wide for this stuff.

So that’s it for this Bokeh Wednesday. Shallow depth of field AND pumpkin muffins? Mmmmm. Doesn’t get much better than that!

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!

If you were  to say to me, “Hey Amanda. Who’s your favorite band?”, I’d have a few answers for that question (I’m not good at having only one favorite. It’s a blessing and a curse.) My answer would go something like this, “Hey. Good question. My favorite band’s The Beatles. And mewithoutYou. And anything David Bazan does. In no particular order.”  I have already gushed about getting to see mewithoutYou (The Weiss Family) again back in August. And here we are, not even two months later, and I’ve just been able to see David Bazan. This made me so stinking happy. So, so happy.

Bazan could’ve played anything from any album and I’d have been stoked, because I don’t know if there’s a song on any of his records that I DON’T like. But I was pleased with the mixture of songs he did. A lot of the new album. Some from the EP. And some from his work with Pedro the Lion. I was quite pleased.

It’s nice when something you’ve so looked forward to meets and even exceeds your expectations. Thank you, Mr. Bazan.

(Pssssst. More photos from this show are HERE)

(Pentax K20D. Smc Pentax-a 50mm/2)

I have a dizzying array of photos and blogs that I am working  on for Shoot With Personality.  Tales of mystery and intrigue and magnicent adventures in the world of photography. Not really. I did attend Cooper-Young Fest recently and did some street-style photography, did a photo shoot for a musician I know, and I also acquired a “new to me” Polaroid-style instant camera, so blogs about those things (and more) are in the works.

(these two were taken Monday, but I was trying to be a minimalist in Monday’s post)

Bokeh-a-licious

Bonus:
Part Bokeh Wednesday shot, part food porn shot. All delicious. Blueberry pancakes I brunched on at home this morning.

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