Last weekend I was lucky enough to spend some time with some very good and extremely talented friends of mine who also happen to be crazy good wedding photographers, check them out here: Tim Kelly Photography. Recently I purchased a new fancy-pants camera (a Canon 100D) partly because I like taking photos and wanted a decent camera, and partly so I could take some high quality food photos so not to blind you with shoddy images whilst you peruse my blog. The only flaw in my grand camera purchasing plan was that camera skills were extremely limited – thank god for auto mode. I LOVE my camera. It is relatively small and sleek, buuuuut unfortunately I wasn’t quite making the most of its whizz-bang functionalities.
I first met Nadine and Tim – the genius’ behind Tim Kelly Photography over 10 years ago when we were all at Uni (those were the days …). Nadine and I bonded over a hate of Stats 193 as we fumbled through the (daily) help classes together and somehow both managed to pass the paper (?!) – a pre requisite for our psychology degrees. The silver lining of that slow slog was that despite having an extreme hate for stats, I was lucky enough to gain an amazing friend and thus a beautiful friendship was born – whooooo! I do feel grateful for Stats 193 for that reason, and that reason only; I have absolutely no idea how to do any form of statistics now – fail.
Tim and Nadine spent an afternoon with our fabulously creative friend Megan and me, and were extremely patient and thorough on the teaching front while we asked one trillion questions. I now know what shutter speed, aperture and ISO actually mean … well sort of … mostly. And can see the numbers at the bottom of the screen clearly through the eye viewer – there is a scrolley-button-thing to adjust that depending on eye sight! Who knew?!
One of the most difficult things for me when taking photos for this blog, is that unfortunately I have to go to my ‘actual’ job during the day and so the majority of my blog rambles, cooking/baking and blogging time has to occur in the evenings when there is zero natural light present. Turns out natural light is an extremely important aspect in taking a decent shot of something scrummy. So I apologise for any photos which suck a bit, and I will be doing my best to take pic’s during the day from now on in.
I prepared a couple of things to take for the ‘Epic Photography Afternoon’ these being, green juice (of course) and Snickers Bar Slice – nom. I have comparison photos too! Before the lesson (snickers slice) and after the lesson (green juice) … but first … here’s a recipe …
Pre photography lesson
Snickers Bar Slice
3 heaped tablespoons of melted coconut oil
4ish tablespoons of natural peanut butter (I use Pic’s usually or homemade if I’ve been an over achiever)
1 tablespoon of honey or pure maple syrup (if you fancy these a little sweeter then bump this measurement up to 2 tablespoons)
2 tablespoons of cacao powder
1/2 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
1/2 cup of roughly crushed raw cashews
Melt the coconut oil and then add the peanut butter, honey/maple syrup, cacao powder and vanilla extract/bean paste. Roughly crush the cashews either in a blender or chuck them in a snap lock bag and smash them about with a rolling pin, then add them to the melted mixture.
Pour into a tin lined with baking paper and pop it into the fridge until set. Cut/chop up when ready and enjoy! This slice takes literally about 10 mins max to make – how handy 🙂
Post photography lesson – immense improvement
Great post Anna! Your snickers slice looks devine. Looking forward to some snap lessons!
The green juice photo is great! Keep up the good work!
Aha, I see the difference! Clever! I look forward to further edification. I like the adjustment for eyesight idea although I’ve no idea what it’s all about, hahaha. Great blog.