Processing pictures of pastries

I'm sure at least a few of you have been wondering what I've been up to. Your daring displaced person, valiant vagabond, or even tenacious transient has not been quite the busy baker as of late. With a new little person (not mine) in my life, a new camera, and looming deadlines at work, I've been a bit preoccupied. I didn't realize what I had gotten myself into when I ordered Plate to Pixel, nor when I bought my new camera. It wasn't until I installed Photoshop Lightroom did I think, "whoa this is going to be a lot of work!" Taking pictures is easy. Taking well thought out, balanced and appetizing pictures of food is tough. Really tough. In her book, Helene Dujardin stresses that the more effort you take into taking good pictures, the less post processing you'll have to do. Since I don't understand most of Lightroom at the moment, I'll stick to what I've gleaned from the book. Let me know what you think? Here is a relatively decent pictures I took of profiteroles.

It's advised that you start out by taking pictures of fruits or vegetables, things that are relatively static and aren't runny and melting. Of course I'm not one to take the easy route, right? Runny? Melty? Perfect! These profiteroles were made using my pate-a-choux recipe. I filled them with scoops of vanilla ice cream and topped them with chocolate sauce. Unfortunately I can't tell you what goes in the chocolate sauce other than chocolate, golden syrup, and maybe water? That's what happens when you let people into the kitchen.

I also made some Lemon Ricotta Cookies that one of my best friends is very fond of and turned me onto. I like how soft the cookies look.They have an almost airy look to them, which means they're low-cal right? Course. I've realized that I don't like taking aerial pictures of food as many food photographers do. I guess I figure that you really don't look at food like that when you're about to eat it. I guess a good rule of thumb is to think... would I want to eat that?

A lot of good food photography is achieved by using the aperture priority on the camera to manipulate the depth of field. Increasing the lens aperture diameter (decreasing the f-stop value), decreases the depth of field. In layman's terms, that means that the thing in front is focused, and stuff in the back (or sometimes front!) is fuzzy. Looks nice though right? I hope so. I've a bit more image post-processing to do, but I'll have a full post with recipe up soon!