You and your chocoholic loved one will devour this Dark Chocolate Heart Cake on Valentine’s Day. I can’t believe Valentine’s Day is almost here. It feels like I was just baking a Nutella Glazed S’more Bundt Cake and complaining about how it felt like Fall would never come. Ironically, here it is the middle of…
I am feelin’ this mocha biscuit cake, y’all. And I gotta tell ya: I have a soft spot for desserts that come together easily…and this dessert falls into that category.
What’s up, people? Are you ready for another round of the fabulousness that is Bundtbakers? I mean, I can’t hear you through my laptop so I’m assuming you all responded with a resounding “Yes!” This month’s theme is Strange but good flavor combinations. I found some weird ones out there, particularly this avocado pound cake…
Sometimes you need that extra somethin’ in your baking. Usually, I reach for Bourbon (god bless you, Kentucky), but lately I’ve been reaching for Amaretto. You may remember this lovely almond-infused liqueur from this california almond fudge pie or this incredible amaretto almond bunt cake.
After a much needed break, I’ve returned with a Southern favorite: Coca Cola Bundt Cake. Okay, I know what your thinking… Coca Cola Bundt Cake is not really a thing, but I’m making it a thing for this month’s #Bundtbakers. The theme, as you may have guessed, is retro desserts. When pondering old-school desserts the…
The web is full of bad food photography tips. Most folks mean well, but don’t understand the science that underpins photography.
For the beginners who follow these tips, this uniformed advice stifles creativity and leads to a very formulaic way of shooting. Read More…
Hey there. Happy All Things Thursday!
Remember me? I know, I know…it’s been a minute. Please forgive my tardiness. I just woke up from a 4 hr nap. Naps are very necessary when you’re crazy busy. Crazy busy doing what, you ask? Making cookies, man…tons and tons of cookies.
Typically, during Christmastime, people are making cookies as gifts or for general snacking purposes. I get it…’tis the season. The thing is…I bake cookies for a living so during the holidays, when I’m baking thousands of cookies for corporate parties and the like, I’m not really into making cookies for myself.
That being said, I do love the holidays and the cookie celebration it brings. If I weren’t up to my eyeballs in dough, these are the treats I’d put on my Christmas table…
When I’m in the mood for sweet and crispy, I reach for these Chocolate Star Cookies. (Williams-Sonoma)
Little clouds of joy topped with icing? Yes, please. Italian Anise Cookies (Food)
Ah…the genius of Dorie Greenspan. Speculoos Buttons (Bon Appetit)
The perfect Sugar Cookie.
Sometimes the perfect sugar cookie needs Royal Icing. (Cupcakes and Cashmere)
What would Christmas be like without Gingerbread Snowflakes? I don’t wanna know. (Martha Stewart)
How cool would your mantle look with this Gingerbread Men Garland? Pretty freakin’ cool, man. (Donna Hay)
That’s it for me, friends. I’m taking my ginger-honey tea and heading back to bed. I hope your holiday is filled with family, friends and Irish Whiskey…and cookies, of course.
Nothing wins you friends faster than a full cookie jar.
Mary Hunt Altfillisch
Happy All Things Thursday, People!
Sorry that I missed ya last week. I’ve been sick and then it was finals week, blah, blah, blah…
First things first…I’d like to wish my great friends Marsha and Pauline, the happiest of birthdays today. They’re twins, by the way. And, as it happens, they’re both pregnant. How crazy would it be if they both had twins? Just imagine…uh oh, my head is spinning.
Things are looking up here at I bake he shoots. Did you see that graph? We went from 146 to 992 visitors in one day. Say what, now?
What ‘s most important here is you. That’s right, you. You came to our site, took a look around, hung out, and gave us some cool compliments. Without you this would all be for naught. Well…not completely. Even if you didn’t like us, we’d still get to eat some pretty tasty food at the end of the day.
Hold up a second…I’m getting off track.
What Dave and I would like to do is give you a big, sloppy, wet kiss to show our gratitude. However, that might be quite difficult and kinda gross. So instead, we’ll give you a hearty…
We promise…this is just the beginning.
Cheers,
Dave & Mondo
There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
Morpheus
When I need to crop a photo for Tastespotting and Foodgawker, my tool of choice is Adobe Lightroom. In addition to being an amazing image cataloging program, Lightroom has a super simple cropping tool that makes it easy to get your images ready for the web. If you don’t already have it, check out the Adobe Photographer Program and give yourself an early Christmas present.
The crop tools provided by Foodgawker and Tastespotting are nice, but Lightroom is better and you have complete control over your images. In addition, you can add sharpening to compensate for the jpeg compression. Finally, with Lightroom, you only have to crop once and the job is done for all the social media sites.
Foodgawker recently moved the cheese and updated their image requirements to accommodate the Apple retina displays. Tastespotting is going to do the same, so you should check out the latest info.
Here are the pertinent pages:
Tastespotting image submission guidelines
Foodgawker FAQ page
As of December of 2013, the image guidelines to crop a picture for Tastespotting and Foodgawker are simple:
Tastespotting – 250 x 250 pixel image
Foodgawker – 550 x 550 pixel image
Step 1
Select the desired image in the catalog and move into the Development module. Find the image adjustment tools under the histogram and select the crop tool.
Step 2
In the crop tool window, select an aspect of 1×1. Manipulate the highlighted image until the desired crop is achieved. Hit Enter. If further manipulation is required, select the crop tool again and readjust the image.
Step 3
Move back into the library module and click on the Export button. To create a Tastespotting/Foodgawker acceptable image, setup the Export setting as follows:
File Settings
Format: jpeg
Color Space: SRGB
Quality: 100
Image Sizing
Resize to fit: Check Mark with Long Edge or Short Edge
Size: 550 pixels for Foodgawker/250 pixels for Tastespotting
Resolution: Leave as is
Output Sharpening
Sharpen for: Screen
Amount: High
Click Export to create a jpg
Cropping a photo for Tastespotting and Foodgawker is a bit of a chore, but it’s worth the effort. With Lightroom, cropping is a snap and you have a wide range of tools to make your images look their best.
For the perfect baked potato, I put the plane on autopilot and used the same hard light setup from the classic cornbread post. I’ve been diggin’ those cornbread shots the last couple of weeks and wanted to play with the light a little more.
I’ve never been of fan of hard light, but on the classic cornbread shoot, I went that direction and liked the results. It’s a bit of a throwback to the 1990’s when everybody was using the big Fresnels, but nothing shows off texture like a hard light scraping across the surface of a subject. The only problem is the mess of specular highlights that crop up when it hits anything reflective.
To control the highlights created by the hard light, I used a couple of methods:
A Gobo – A gobo is any solid object that goes between your light and the subject. Once the light is blocked, it no longer creates a specular highlight. For the solo baked potato shot, the gobo was my hand placed in front of the light 6 inches away from the potato.
The Angles – Light is like a pool ball being knocked around on a table. Everything works within a family of angles. The highlights on the top of the potatoes in the group shot were a little blown out, so I simply changed the angle and moved the camera up a few inches.
So how did I create the hard light? I moved the main light back 4 feet from my normal position. The quality (soft or hard) is determined by the size of the light relative to the subject. Light hitting a subject can be described in many ways, but at the heart of the matter is this simple concept:
BIG LIGHT = SOFT LIGHT
SMALL LIGHT = HARD LIGHT
If a light is pulled back, it becomes smaller relative to the subject and is harder. If a light is moved up, it becomes larger relative to the subject and is softer. Every lighting manufacturer likes to tout their latest miracle modifier, but the physics of light is steadfast.
On the final shot with the group of ingredients, I got tired of fighting the hard light and moved the key light up to overcome the blown out specular highlights.
This is my original test shot with the lighting setup shown above:
You’ll notice that the highlights and shadows are very hard. After seeing this, I pulled the handle on my ejection seat and went to the much softer lighting setup shown below:
Finally, with a nice big light, I had a technically acceptable shot and called it a day. It was time to eat some perfect baked potatoes.
Technical
Camera: Nikon D90
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm 2.8
Strobes: White Lightning x1600
Tripod: Manfrotto
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 50mm
Shutter: 125
Aperture: f/11
