chocolate

Awakening the Senses: Tantalizing tastes

Awakening the Senses: Tantalizing tastes

What are some of your favourite tastes? When you eat them, do you power through like it's your first meal in months, or do you sit and quietly savour the flavours and textures? Do you chew carefully or do you swallow big bites nearly whole? Thich Nhat Hanh recommends chewing your food until it gently slides down your throat in an effort to be more mindful. It sounds gross to chew that much, but when I tried it even a simple hamburger became a thrill to eat. Tasting can be an art of its own and it's easy to lose yourself in all the amazing flavours of wine, cheese, coffee, or chocolate. Are you willing to let yourself get lost?

Learning DSLR Photography: Chocolate

I'm stepping out of my comfort zone again to show you another experiment with DSLR photography. I interviewed a local chocolatier (the blog post will be published here soon) and she gave me a box of chocolates to try. More beautiful than most, these chocolates lend themselves to photography thanks to their vibrant colours and unique shapes and textures. They taste pretty good too! Here's the story of a beautiful box of chocolates told in pictures.

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Even the box is beautiful. It's inviting me in...

DSLR photography - chocolate

This is the magical view you get when you open the box.

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Contemplating the chocolates...

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I love reading the descriptions. They really make the flavours come alive.

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Time to try the first one!

DSLR photography - chocolate

That's cassis coulis (like blackcurrant jam) and white ganache (chocolate mixed with cream). Yum!

DSLR photography - chocolate

And this one is pistachio!

DSLR photography - chocolate

Just one left! Yes I ate them all in one sitting.

DSLR photography - chocolate

All gone! Feeling a little sick...

What did I learn?

  • That I need more lighting than I think I do. Even with big windows I realized I could have used a lamp or two since most of these turned out too dark and I had to use editing software to brighten them up.
  • Take more pictures! Try more things! I wish I had turned the box around to get it from the other side, that I had taken the chocolates out of the cups, and that I had captured more of the insides of the chocolates. I could have photographed my messy fingers too!
  • Can I turn the camera more? Almost all the pictures are the same direction. They work, but it would have been good to try the other way too.
  • Need to be more careful about focus - I use automatic focus and sometimes I don't love where it chooses to focus. I need to pay more attention to that.

Have an idea about how I could have made these pictures better? Leave a comment! Let me know what you've learned about digital photography.