Part 3: Sink or swim in a crumble (on photographing food in a small kitchen with frozen shoulders and busy kids around).

If you mention a crumble to a Polish person, they would most likely very instinctively say that in Poland we have something quite similar but it is called ‘drożdżówka’ and it is actually a yeast-based cake that we often make with plumbs (or other fruit) when summer fades away and autumn takes charge of the table.

‘Drożdżówka’ has been always the treat that came out of my aunty’s oven every Sunday after the eleven o’clock mass that our priest always struggled to conclude. Hands were getting colder, legs were getting restless and as our stomachs were rapidly shrinking in size, our souls were working out their patience. Nourished with the Word of God, we either ran to our car or rushed to the pavements in hope for a piece of cake and a warming cup of hot coffee at my aunty’s place. ‘Niech Będzie Pochwalony Jezus Chrystus’ (May Lord Jesus Christ be Praised) was what used to be boldly exclaimed entering her kitchen. ‘Na wieki wieków, Amen’ (Now and ever shall be) was the reply. Interestingly, I observe, these words are slowly exiting our Polish culture as I hear us often saying ‘I’m back’ instead of the customary Christian greeting. I like the Christian greeting and it seems to me that our Sunday ritual is not entirely completed without those words. Ethnographers tend to notice these shifts in language patterns quite quickly just as they would note changes in how cakes are made. ‘Drożdżowka’ has changed and evolved in those Polish houses everywhere where the dietary requirements kicked in or other preferences are taking over, like losing weight, for instance.

The English crumble, I feel, is what is replacing this cake in families such as ours where gluten and egg whites, cow’s milk are off the menu and yeast should be avoided. Now, of course, there are hundred of ways in which crumble can be made and eaten. The one that I photographed here was made with apples and pears, honey (from my dad’s beehives), cinnamon, gluten free flour, coconut flour and coconut oil. I must admit I feel a bit like Willy Wonka by showing you photos of a dessert for a second-week in a row and I worry that the police will come and fetch me for introducing sweets to the city, but I am sure that you understand it very well that it is all done in the good faith of preserving childhood dreams and mother’s sanity as photographing it and writing it all up in a small kitchen with two frozen shoulders is not a small effort. ;)

So last week I had these questions in mind/ obstacles while photographing:

– how to photograph the food when the kids want to eat it straight away

– how to photograph left overs or food partially eaten in a manner that is acceptable to the eye but at the same to preserve the sense of realism

– how to make use of the sink

Essentially, I had this problem that we ate too much of it and too quickly but in all honesty waiting is difficult with hungry kids and all that you can do is to ask them to leave at least some for later or spoon some out before serving to preserve it for the photo (which comes in handy even a day after when you come back home from a cold walk and crave for some warming food). The crumble was lovely, but it resembled more of a pie than a crumble, I guess, because there was quite a lot of the dough. The dish was fairly flat, made of porcelain, rectangular and white. The very first thing that I thought of was that there would need to be a separation between the white colour of the dish and the white of the sink for a clearer composition so I decided to put it on a decoupaged beige tray that a differnt aunt of mine gave me a few years ago. I placed the dish with the tray in the sink for some photos to see what the effect would be with the white frame around the decoupaged try but in the end I like the one that sat higher on the edge of the sink as it gave me more depth to the background. The bits stuck to the side of the crumble pie dish were visible and quite unsightly so I decided to colour match the custard with a small towel and I placed it on the right side of the dish to cover the crumbs. That was done for the close-up. For a broader view, I looked for an additional item in the kitchen that again would somewhat decorate the food and take attention away from the fact that it was gluttonously devoured. I had this elegant chipped little coffee cup that I thought would take the attention and I placed it on a few wooden trays to give it prominence and posture. To complete the picture I used Contrastly autumn calm filters to give it it a calming and relaxing mood and feel – I wanted to evoke a feeling of calm after storm, one that you experience once the children are asleep and guests have gone home, and you are just on your own cleaning the kitchen. I included here also a backstage photo with my ring light for you to see how I positioned the light. I was taking the photos while standing on the left, just behind the ring light. On the backstage photo, the cup’s hand is directed at you. This is a compositional mistake. I remember a long time ago, I attended a course on children photography with Elena Shumilova and I couldn’t understand why one of the photos that I took of my daughter was compositionally worse than other ones. In that photo my daughter was sitting sideways and her elbow was somewhat lifted. Elena explained to me that it looked as if she was elbowing the viewer’s eye and in a way this is exactly what this cup appears to do in this backstage photo. It looks as if it was trying to elbow you so it is not the desired and the intended composition for a pleasing shot. Just the backstage photo. :)

Back to the topic of crumbles, last Sunday we visited Bradgate Park in Leicestershire and we stopped at the Coach&Horses for Sunday meal before the walk. Their crumble was a much healthier version to ours, I feel, as it had I think almost a triple the amount of fruit and it had less flour. As a result, theirs was a less fatty option to choose from. Avoid ours. But give photography at least an afterthought… :)

What have you been making recently?

Till now.

Alicja

P.S. I found heat patches to be very useful in easing my pain in the shoulders while I lift the camera up and while I hold it. I am using these ones at moment: Deep Relief Heat Patches. They might be useful to you too.

Frozen shoulders at work. Part 2 on photographing food in a small kitchen with kids around and pain that stays.

When children scream for sweets during the weekend, my husband occasionally makes them small biscuits (biscotti) without following any particular recipe except for obeying one rule and that is no white of egg as our son cannot tolerate it. When egg whites accumulate something needs to be done with them and when the sweet tooth screams the loudest, the temptation wins. We know that one day we will eliminate the sugar totally out of our family life, but last Sunday was not the day for it. I must admit I have a bit of a soft spot for meringues as they remind me of the time when the supermarkets were not common in Poland but hens on everyone’s yards were and instead of buying wrapped chocolate bars, mums and aunties would make meringues (bezy) as a treat. The Polish version was a bit smaller than those on the photos and more golden but I guess they were equally sweet and I must say I am a bit sentimental about this treat as much as I understand that it is most likely the last thing you should eat when you’re dealing with any sort of inflammation. But I am not here to preach but to teach and to share a few tips on how to make your life easy when photographing food while suffering from frozen shoulders or similarly painful conditions.

Last week I wrote about the use of the bottom drawer for set-ups to prevent having to lift your camera too high and to protect the set up from children running through the kitchen. This week I want to tackle a different obstacle, i.e. the weight of surfaces on which we photograph and their ease of moving and lifting.

Photographers are usually extremely grateful people. I have observed these creative minds for quite a while now and I learnt from them that sometimes the smallest tip changes the outcome of one’s practice for the better and for years and so I have learnt not to dismiss the value of the tiniest improvement I make for myself because small moves matter to our bones and joints as much as to our compositions and final images.

So the first simple tip today is: to avoid excessive weight lifting, appreciate flimsy things, the washing basket that you probably thought would not hold too much weight, the flower pot stand made of willow or the just delivered item in a box made of card. You can shuffle these around your kitchen with ease and you can then move them when the light changes during the day.

The second tip is: use light wood or light canvases as surfaces to photograph your food on. Canvases can be super thin and easy to lift but they are not as light as paper and so they hold food on them quite well. You can lift the canvas with your hand up and down easily to create the shadows that you want around your food. This is significant especially if as a maturing photographer you are already caring for your triangles in the composition. In the photos below I was purposefully creating triangles either with my arrangements or with the shadows. I was lifting the colourful canvas towards the light in such a way that the triangle was not only on the designed surface but also was dropped by the meringues giving the photos interesting look that created a bit of visual tension too – as what the drawn triangle on the surface was pointing to the right and the shadows dropped by the meringues to the left.

The additional benefits of using canvases are that you can leave them unpainted or you can create interesting patterns, textures or designs on top of them to give your photos extra interest and individuality. I used one of my paintings here that I textured with wax, a plain white canvas, and a different playful design piece that I did a couple of years ago after getting interested in abstract art and learning from Joy Fahey and Kasia Krecicka. Great abstract artists.

The last tip is: keep your strap around your neck. If you are in as much pain as I was last week, you are most likely not capable of holding your camera for too long. Let the strap take the weight and position your body against a cooker or a door to let those items support you if you photographing while standing.

My capacity in my hands is increasing but I learnt my lesson and I am not trying to take more than I can handle. I hope you are embracing creative life with all that you have.

Above are my photographic results. Enjoy your visual treats. :)

p.s. If you click on each individual photo, they will appear in full view. I dropped my ring light the other day and need to rearrange the diffusing cover. I have included the backstage photo as is so that you can see how close sometimes the food needs to be to the light source to drop the desired shadow.

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.

When there’s a wedding, there must be a …

It has become a bit of a tradition now that when I go to Poland, I photograph Dorota’s sweet art forms. This one is a beautiful floral wedding cake that I found irresistible when shooting the pictures (I had to try hard to keep a distance to prevent inadvertent tasting). I must admit that the more I take these photographs, the more I want to take them and the more I observe what Dorota makes, the more I am curious of what she will make next. You too?

More of Dorota’s sweet beauties on her Facebook site: My Cake