Girl stuff

I'm heading downtown tonight with a friend to check this out. I've been meaning to look into it for my jewellry designs for awhile, but haven't made much of an effort. One of the gals from my entrepreneur group is a featured designer tonight: Lover Cosmetics. It will be nice to see how she puts some of the planning discussions in practice. Even better, I'm getting out of the house on a weeknight! Yay!

Fun at the park

We spent some quality time with Millie at the park this weekend, taking some photos for a customer. I love this picture--a little dorky and that one lone dandelion seems lonely and cute at the same time.

Photo gardening

A few outcasts from a recent photoshoot:I managed to get a few things planted for a little early color and our porch is looking so much better for it. Both the child and I are anxious for the season to really start up because we both are craving lots of color right now.

Snowscreen

If I had a loft or a wide open space, I couldn't stop myself from slapping some screens around to partition off areas. After thinking about the partitions in that last post, I am convinced that we could really use some cool screens to divide out our work space from our home space, maybe even to incorporate in our work. I really love what this photographer and designer has produced:

image from Mark Finzel.

Isn't this an interesting idea? I like the photograph he used, but more than that, I like that it allows light through it. The craziest part? The color changes depending on the type of light passing through it, whether it's natural or artificial. It is amazing to me how drastically the color is affected in a photograph by the lighting and the lengths you have to go to in order to "correct" the color before the shot is even taken. As a photographer/designer, this guy managed to put all that together.

Spring styling

I am amazed by what designers can do and the ways they approach a space and incorporate color and design into the function of a room. I mean, look at these glossy candy colored work tables used for a cooking studio in Japan:

image from Frame by Emmanuelle Moureaux

The design just fits perfectly for the 20-30 year old woman looking for a fun cooking class. I would have fun just picking the table color I would work on--Periwinkle!

The same firm also posted pictures of a beauty salon they did--the colors seems the same, but I really like the long partitions hanging down. With the rest of the room so white, those vertical pops of color are really nice.

image from Frame by Emmanuelle Moureaux
Our next big project around here is trying to put together a functional but presentable space for our home studio, so pictures like these really get me going with ideas for our workspace. The big challenge for us is trying to do it ourselves and on a very minimal budget. I'm planning on working on it next week, so I'll try to post some pictures and see if I can get some feedback.

Food in focus

Taking pictures of food is tricky. First of all, food only lasts so long. You have a few moments with whipped cream or cereal or even soup before it's no longer ready for its closeup. In a short amount of time, you've got to get all the lighting and positioning perfect for it to look right.
Second, some food just doesn't look right in a photo. I think gravy looks weird...and milk. This might be because I remember being told a long time ago that commercials use stuff like glue to act as milk on cereal and now I just see a glass of glue.
Third, food is multi-sensory but photography is not. You have to try for a photo that smells and tastes good. We see these photos all the time, but replicating them is difficult. The photographers that are able to make mouths water are also able to make a living in a fairly specialized niche.
We needed to take some food shots this weekend for a training manual for a local restaurant. It's very much a neighborhood gathering place but it's located in a strip mall and doesn't get much natural light at all. We were working on location with the lighting and background and all but improvised with a piece of white foam-core we luckily had in my backseat (yay crafts!). Here's one of the pics we got:
Does it look like you could sit down and dig in? In hindsight, we should have set it up with a couple pints of Guiness nearby.