Category: Education

Is food photography possible in a small kitchen with small kids and frozen shoulders (mentoring post)?

I know that there is a handful of people here who like when I talk photography so I thought I will share with you how I resolved the problem of set ups and children in a small kitchen. I wish it occurred to me earlier but if it wasn’t for the frozen shoulders and my obtuse refusal to give up on taking photos, I would have not come up with it. If you have ever suffered from this condition, you know the pain and you know the catastrophising whisperer who is attached to it, i.e ‘I would never be able to do landscape photography. There is no way I can lift up my gear’ or ‘I would never be able to lift my elbows above my chest and get a decent photo.’ Well, it so happens that we do not always need to lift the camera above our chest to take a decent photo and we do not need kitchen surfaces to take them either.

It is ironic to some extent that it took me two frozen shoulders to see that I was quite limited in my thinking about food photography and my ability to do it in our circumstances. Limiting beliefs are good to discover for oneself simply to stay clear of too. This is what I used to think:

I thought that my kitchen was too small to take the photos of what we cook.

Obviously, I was mistaken.

I used to think that I need to make the surfaces empty to photograph the food we cook.

I was in the wrong about that.

I used to think that I would not be able to protect my set ups from my children’s hands.

I laboured with a false belief.

I used to think that having two frozen shoulders would mean I would not be able to handle my heavy camera.

I placed more trust in myself and my slow recovery.

I used to think that I must use the available daylight when I cook to have decent food photographs.

Where has this conviction originated?

To make your dream come true of taking photos of the food that you cook while you handle the kids and perhaps the partner that loves his cooking too, empty one drawer in your kitchen. If your situation is similar to mine, health-wise, use the lowest drawer available so that you can point the camera downwards. Create a set up in there. Choose your surfaces, clothes, trays, etc. Keep it all there and when the food is ready, plate it and rearrange it in your drawer to suit your taste. Take a photo.

I have chosen the lowest drawer in a shaded area in my kitchen where not much light gets in. I wanted to use a ring light to have full control over the brightness and the direction of light. I was bending the ring sideways to create artificial shadows for some photos. For brighter compositions I photographed directly from the top just through the ring light. Sometimes I squatted too and took photos from the side while the light was above the food.

In order to hold food in one place I use a wreath ring and I cover the wreath with a cloth. It is also useful for holding soup bowls or other dishes.

Happy with the results.

One step further to creative living with what we’ve got.

Blends and mixes

“Everyone has a purpose in life and a unique talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals.” Kallam Anji Reddy

I’ve been to a management course recently which really was a rather unusual thing for me to do but surprisingly after my initial shock related to its jargon, I started warming up to it and in the end I really enjoyed it. There was one particular thought or phrase within the language of management that really stuck to my mind and I thought I’ll share it with you here. This phrase, to my mind, is a wonderful alternative to the culture of ‘not-enoughness’ that is so typical of the world that we live in and I think can successfully guide us through life. That phrase was nothing else but ‘Realise the benefits’. You may not get as ecstatic about it but it really spoke to me. We do have an awful lot in our lives, our backgrounds, our cultures, our languages, our experiences, talents, and energy and it is our responsibility to realise for ourselves and others the benefits of it all. To mix it, to blend it into our personal concoction of magic-making potion.

So you want your child to speak Italian.. Important advice on combining reading with experiencing.

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We live in a world that rightly so encourages us to read a lot to our children but research confirms that it’s best for our children when we read books with our own experiences in mind and we continuously make connections between the world on the page and the world around us. So slow down when you read, don’t rush with simple ‘What’s this?’, ‘What’s that?’ but have a conversation with your child, smile, make eye contact and ask open questions such as ‘What did you like most about going to the beach?’, ‘What would have happened if you hadn’t had your wellingtons on your feet?, ‘What was daddy doing over there? And what was grandpa doing?’. For language development ‘the doing’ is as crucial as naming objects. When you talk to your child make sure that you use many verbs (for some reason we like to focus on nouns only) as they help your child build sentences and aid storytelling. This book below is brilliant and I wish we had read it and talked around it (with verbs) when my son was smaller. It is a great introduction to various themes and topics and a great memory trigger. I strongly recommend it for those of you who speak Italian at home.

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Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. I recommend the book out of my sheer appreciation for it.

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Walking

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“Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy.
There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors…disconnected from each other. On foot everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

On education and schooling

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This September the school bell rang for my son for the first time and since then our life has started to revolve around school and education. So far we are managing well and so far we’ve been happy about it. That said, school life can be a source of anxiety for parents and children I can be a very anxious parent but I have learnt that my son does not thrive with my anxiety (who does?). It’s the positive and optimistic sort of leadership that carries him through transitions. It’s not about dismissing his fear, but about giving him a reassuring smile and many, many words of comfort. What helps me as a parent is the reminder I give to myself that education does not start or end at school. It happens with every human connection that we make.

Have you watched Tea with Mussolini, a film by Franco Zeffirelli? The film is about a group of cultured ladies who meet for tea somewhere in Florence and who take it upon themselves to raise and educate a young boy called Luca. Luca is lucky. Not only because there is an artist, a singer and an archeologist among the women, but primarly because there is a great sense of duty, companionship, trust and care shown by the women, and the conviction that they can raise the boy up well if they do it together. Following the ladies and joining them in their pursuits and favourite pastimes, the boy receives an exemplary education. The ladies are not trying to create or recreate any educational system. They are just themselves and they show the boy what they love most themselves. In that way they become the most convincing teachers the boy could possibly have.

Seth Godin, an American author and entrepreneur (being interviewed by Marie Forleo in an incredibly interesting interview that you can find here), asks questions about the purpose of schooling and explains what satisfies his idea of good and useful education: “Coming home with straight A’s is fine, I’ll accept that, but what I’d rather have you do is come home and tell me something amazing that you learned in the spirit of doing something good for someone else, come home and tell me some really dramatic failure that occurred as you were trying to solve an interesting problem.” It’s not the knowledge that’s given on the plate but the one that’s gained through engagement and experiences that is emphasised here. Unique to each human being. Proportional to the involvement each of us has in every small little task we encounter through life.

Of course, this is just a short note on the vast topic of education and I am not making a breakthrough here, but I really love what Seth Godin had to say and I love when communities take responisbility for educating children too. Schools cannot do it on their own.

Do you feel the same?