Winter Closing

Wow. I haven't posted anything here in quite some time.  Winter Quarter, and the past two weeks have been crazy for me.  We just wrapped up what is to be our most difficult quarter at school, (or so I have been told) with only one quarter left.  It makes me both sad and excited, to enter a new chapter of life, and out of the safety net and the confines of school.  It will be very interesting to see though what the future has in store for each of us that are graduating in June.  The SCCA portfolio show will be in June! So exciting.

So for the past few weeks, we wrapped up our quarter long Non Profit project, which I did for the Neighborhood Farmer's Market Alliance, finished up Green and Black (& Free Choice) for our Colors assignment, along with our Marketing Plans. 

On top of school work, the past couple of weeks were big for me in other ways.  I was honored to have been featured here the house studios blog and I photographed fruit for a frozen yogurt company in the bay area, and in other crazy news, one of my photos has been reposted on tumblr over 9,500 here times.  Yowza!

So over the next few weeks, before school starts up again, I will be shot planning for our week long photography trek up to Port Townsend and making a trip up there, visiting with friends, hunting for new props, but also relaxing!!  I am happy that spring is right around the corner, and looking forward to having more light, and hopefully some warmer weather as well.

Here are some photos that I hadn't had a chance to post yet here.  Hope you enjoy!

Roasted Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts

Well I am certainly a week behind, at least in posting my non-profit shoots and the recipes. As mentioned before, this quarter has been pretty crazy, the most amount of shooting we have ever had. I shot this past Friday, two shoots on Saturday, my final non-profit shoot, and went location scouting in Port Townsend today. 

 Every year the 2nd year photography students go spend a week photographing in and around Port Townsend.  The good news, the place I am staying at, and  a few place that I am shooting are locked down! Woohoo. I will be going up again to do some more scouting in a month or so, and see if there are other places I may want to shoot at.  It is only 4 days of shooting. I'm super excited  though because the place that I am renting is ridiculously cute and will provide tons of shooting options there!!!! yes.

On to the recipe, for my 3rd Non Profit shoot, I shot Brussels sprouts and roasted potatoes with Rosemary.  It was really easy to make, delicious and also keeping things on a budget, really pretty inexpensive, which is part of my whole advertising campaign for the Neighborhood Farmer's Market Alliance.

Yield: Serves 4-5 as a side
Ingredients:

• (0.80kg/1.75lb) fingerling potatoes
• (0.34kg/0.75lb) brussels sprouts
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tbsp fresh minced rosemary
• 1 tbsp + 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• 3/4 tsp fine grain sea salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 400F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Rinse and scrub potatoes. Pat dry. Slice in half lengthwise and place into large mixing bowl.
3. Cut off stem of brussels sprouts and remove loose outer leaves. Rinse and pat dry. Place in bowl.
4. Add the minced garlic, minced rosemary, oil, salt, pepper, and optional red pepper flakes into the bowl along with the potatoes and sprouts. Toss with your hands to combine and place on baking sheet.
5. Roast for 35-38 minutes at 400F, stirring once half way through baking. Potatoes will be golden and brussels will be lightly charred when ready. Season with Herbamare (or salt) and pepper to taste and serve immediately.

Enjoy! 

Chicken & Leeks

I am 3/4 of the way done with my quarter long advertising campaign, with my final two shots to be done this Saturday.  Yippee!!   Here is what I shot for last week, which is going with the continued theme of creating meals on a budget from the University District Farmer's Market, a part of the Neighborhood Farmer's Market Alliance.  All of my images will be created for the NFMA, in conjunction with my class.  I will have a 8 total images at the end, with 4 being ingredient shots, and 4 being the prepared meals.

I used this recipe from Real Simple which I had made in the past and was really delicious, roasted apples and leeks with drumsticks.  Very easy, and also pretty budget conscious, a nice wintery meal.  Scroll below for the recipe.

 

Ingredients

• 4  small  crisp apples (such as Empire or Braeburn), quartered
• 2  leeks (white and light green parts), halved crosswise and lengthwise
• 6  small  sprigs fresh rosemary
• 2  tablespoons  olive oil
• Kosher salt and black pepper
• 8  small chicken thighs and drumsticks (4 of each, about 2 1/2 pounds total)

Directions

1. Heat oven to 400° F. In a large roasting pan, toss the apples, leeks, rosemary, oil, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper.
2. Season the chicken with ½ teaspoon each salt and pepper and nestle, skin-side up, among the vegetables.
3. Roast until the chicken is cooked through and the apples and leeks are tender, 40 to 45 minutes.

White!

It's been forever or so it seems since I have posted.  Life is moving at the speed of light it feels this quarter, and every day I am either working, editing, shooting, shot planning, cooking for a shoot, researching images,  you get the picture.  I do always give myself at least Friday and Saturday nights free, since I have to have a few free evenings.

So a few days ago, I was thinking it really is time to write a blog post, and it was going to be on a beet & squash salad I did a week or so back for the non-profit ad campaign I am working on this quarter.  I went over to my bag and opened up my hard drive carrying case, and my hard drive toppled out and hit the concrete floor.  I plugged in the hard drive, and sadly it just beeped over and over again, sounding like a skipping record.  So, I'm sure you can understand no blog post. I thought it was probably a good sign to just go to bed. 

I had last backed up a week earlier, so I just lost 4 shoots from the previous week.  Two were good ones I wanted the files for, and two were so so, but lesson learned.  Backup after every shoot! This was a good lesson to learn now, and thank god I had everything up until the past week.  I was very sad to have lost the rainbow trout shot from below.  I really liked that shoot, and was looking forward to viewing the photos, but it gives me an opportunity to re-shoot, later for hopefully even better results. 

Ok, on to white.  The pictures I am posting were from our colors assignments, for the color white.  I always try to experiment with lighting, so it varies from a large & small octabank, and day light below.

Til next time!

Amy

Red Red Red

I just finished up with my red assignments, part of our quarter long colors assignment.  For this class we have 5 color schemes and 4 images per color, red, white, black, blue/green, yellow/orange (or other). I have really been meaning to do a recipe for the blog, but I don't think that may actually happen this quarter since we have almost 40 shots that we have to come up with. (maybe, maybe?) I have at least 3 shoots lined up for this coming week for assignments, so I will post those once they are completed.  One of those shoots, for my quarter long non-profit advertising campaign, this Saturday will be a recipe so it's quite possible I can post the squash salad recipe. I actually do miss and enjoy cooking, and the whole process of it. 

For the shots below, the first 2 pomegranate shots I used our North Light, a gigantic light, built into a plexi box.  These shots are playing with the idea of pomegranate mulled wine. The next two pie shots, I used natural light, and was my most expensive shoot to date. That is the THIRD cherry pie, that I used. The first one I made, and the crust didn't turn out as expected, the 2nd was from Trader Joe's and just didn't look quite right. The last one is one from High Five Pie, and it looks amazing!   My beet shot I used my qflashes with my softlighter at home, and the 4th and final wine shot, I built a light tent in the studio to surround the wine, and used a lot of plexi. I keep trying to change what lights I am using on every shot, to try to keep pushing myself as much as I can!

Til next time-Amy

Self Portraits

This week for our conceptual photography class, we were to create 3 self portraits that we could use for our "about me" section on our website. This was a bit of a struggle for me, since I really do not like being in front of the camera and find self portraiture sort of strange.  I don't mind being behind the camera, but I just kind of freeze up in front of it. Also, I am so used to shooting food right now, trying to shoot a person (even me) was getting me out of my comfort zone.  I think getting out of your comfort zone is necessary though from time to time and I did get to play with some lens flare.  I have posted below some of my choices for the self portraits.

In other news, I have completed 4 shoots in the last two weeks for red, the first color in our colors assignment which is quarter long.  We will have 4 shots for 5 colors throughout the quarter.  I am trying to keep up with those shots, my editing and (oh my other 4 classes) and also keep blogging but shooting a recipe for the blog hasn't happened yet.  By this upcoming weekend I will be posting my red assignments, which is what I have been working on the last two weeks, so perhaps this weekend I can do a shoot for the blog! Yippee! I can't believe how busy we already are and it's only been a week and a half.

My favorite of course is the last one, iPhone photo, but I don't think I can turn that in. ;)

Fall Quarter Catalog Layouts

School will be starting back up again, soon.  Less than 1 week, which is crazy! Next quarter is going to be a lot of work, from what I have heard. We have our colors assignments and our non-profit advertising campaign, I believe totaling about 30 images, when all is said and done. I finished my pre-production plans last week and between the two assignments and my creative brief I compiled something ridiculous like 50 pages worth of plans, ideas, inspiration to work from.  This will hopefully make things easier for next quarter though in the long run...

On that note, I thought I would take the opportunity to post my last quarter's catalog spreads, just in time for school to start back up again. This was a lot of hard work, but also a lot of fun, and I think that I got some good shots out of it!

Now for a few days, I will be prop shopping, and hopefully have one full movie day before we get back in the swing of things. :)  Here's to a great 2013! 

Amy