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When the outside temperature rises, and the meaning is oh-so-clear
Another post about my lunch.
From my limited experiences, home-made bento boxes fall into two categories. 1) like mine, a bunch of stuff dumped into a box or 2) the fearful, elaborate kind which surely take 14 hours to make and feature animals, flowers, life-sized onigiri replicas of Michael Jackson, etc. In illustration of the latter kind, I offer the picture a colleague emailed to me entitled *this* is a bento box.
Yes, yes I suppose it is. But I'm just not willing to put in the time and effort, I'll stick to dumping things in boxes, thanks, and confining my concerns to whether it tastes nice.
Anyway, earlier this week I stumbled acoss the flickr stream of Sandwood, a lady in the US somewhere. She regularly posts photos of her lunch and, boy, are they pretty. Her boxes seem to fall between the two categories: they still look like food, they do not have faces, they still look tasty, but they're a league and a bit ahead of mine aesthetically.
So, I examined some of the pictures, and concluded that firstly she arranges stuff better than I do, and secondly she puts in a larger variety of things. Not necessarily more food, but lots of little bits and bobs and the riot of colours is partly what makes it look pretty.
So, yesterday, I thought I'd try and make a pretty lunch. It still doesn't feature cut-out carrot flowers because I still think life's a bit short.
Not as pretty as Sandwood's efforts, but better than my usual.
You may also notice that that picture's slightly better in focus than my lunch usually is. I thought hey, if I'm going to try and make pretty boxes, why don't I post them in the Just Bento flickr group as well. Which means I should use a proper camera, not my phone. Which means, er, ChrisC... please can I borrow your camera?
I've done virtually no photography in recent years, my lovely SLRs have been collecting dust. Fundamentally, buying and developing film was just getting to be too expensive. And DSLRs? Well, they're even more expensive.
But blimey, taking "proper" photos of your lunch is hard. First, you have to get over the fact you are now the sort of person who takes photos of their lunch so they can post them on t'internet, which is clearly an odd thing to do. Secondly, you have to decide on the most aesthetically pleasing angle from which to view your lunch - again, not a view I'm used to taking. I did go so far as to move from the kitchen into the living room where the light is better, but still felt vaguely ridiculous taking my lunch on a mini-tour of the flat.
Thirdly, you have to realise that on a borrowed digital camera you have no idea how to adjust aything like the depth of field, and as a result the perspective's gone all weird and made your lunch contain Giant Pickled Onions of Doom.
Fourthly, you have to acknowledge that you have suddenly become (as ChrisC put it) "someone who critically analyses your photos of your lunch". I may never do this again for fear some form of weird mania will set in.
If you're interested, in addition to the Pickled Onions of Doom (not as large as they look, homemade by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
exspelunca, matured to a lovely mahogany-brown and very tasty) I have: white rice mixed with stewed hijiki, blanched beansprouts with umeboshi, cabbage leaves stuffed with pork, yellow pepper sautéed with sundry tomatoes, and some potato salad. There was actually a lot more raw carrot, but it's out of sight down the side of the box from this angle.
The trouble is, large areas of white (eg rice, or potato salad) bounce light away, overexpose and go blurry very quickly. But they're also not terribly interesting, so you want them at the back, not as the focus. I presume? I have no idea. I've never really done any close-up photography. I'm not even sure I know the most basic principles. I probably also should have put the smaller half of the box closer to the camera rather than the larger one. I probably shouldn't have hid things down the side of the box.
Fifthly, I have become the sort of person who appeals, on the internet, for advice on how to take pictures of my lunch :(
From my limited experiences, home-made bento boxes fall into two categories. 1) like mine, a bunch of stuff dumped into a box or 2) the fearful, elaborate kind which surely take 14 hours to make and feature animals, flowers, life-sized onigiri replicas of Michael Jackson, etc. In illustration of the latter kind, I offer the picture a colleague emailed to me entitled *this* is a bento box.
Yes, yes I suppose it is. But I'm just not willing to put in the time and effort, I'll stick to dumping things in boxes, thanks, and confining my concerns to whether it tastes nice.
Anyway, earlier this week I stumbled acoss the flickr stream of Sandwood, a lady in the US somewhere. She regularly posts photos of her lunch and, boy, are they pretty. Her boxes seem to fall between the two categories: they still look like food, they do not have faces, they still look tasty, but they're a league and a bit ahead of mine aesthetically.
So, I examined some of the pictures, and concluded that firstly she arranges stuff better than I do, and secondly she puts in a larger variety of things. Not necessarily more food, but lots of little bits and bobs and the riot of colours is partly what makes it look pretty.
So, yesterday, I thought I'd try and make a pretty lunch. It still doesn't feature cut-out carrot flowers because I still think life's a bit short.
Not as pretty as Sandwood's efforts, but better than my usual.
You may also notice that that picture's slightly better in focus than my lunch usually is. I thought hey, if I'm going to try and make pretty boxes, why don't I post them in the Just Bento flickr group as well. Which means I should use a proper camera, not my phone. Which means, er, ChrisC... please can I borrow your camera?
I've done virtually no photography in recent years, my lovely SLRs have been collecting dust. Fundamentally, buying and developing film was just getting to be too expensive. And DSLRs? Well, they're even more expensive.
But blimey, taking "proper" photos of your lunch is hard. First, you have to get over the fact you are now the sort of person who takes photos of their lunch so they can post them on t'internet, which is clearly an odd thing to do. Secondly, you have to decide on the most aesthetically pleasing angle from which to view your lunch - again, not a view I'm used to taking. I did go so far as to move from the kitchen into the living room where the light is better, but still felt vaguely ridiculous taking my lunch on a mini-tour of the flat.
Thirdly, you have to realise that on a borrowed digital camera you have no idea how to adjust aything like the depth of field, and as a result the perspective's gone all weird and made your lunch contain Giant Pickled Onions of Doom.
Fourthly, you have to acknowledge that you have suddenly become (as ChrisC put it) "someone who critically analyses your photos of your lunch". I may never do this again for fear some form of weird mania will set in.
If you're interested, in addition to the Pickled Onions of Doom (not as large as they look, homemade by
exspelunca, matured to a lovely mahogany-brown and very tasty) I have: white rice mixed with stewed hijiki, blanched beansprouts with umeboshi, cabbage leaves stuffed with pork, yellow pepper sautéed with sundry tomatoes, and some potato salad. There was actually a lot more raw carrot, but it's out of sight down the side of the box from this angle.The trouble is, large areas of white (eg rice, or potato salad) bounce light away, overexpose and go blurry very quickly. But they're also not terribly interesting, so you want them at the back, not as the focus. I presume? I have no idea. I've never really done any close-up photography. I'm not even sure I know the most basic principles. I probably also should have put the smaller half of the box closer to the camera rather than the larger one. I probably shouldn't have hid things down the side of the box.
Fifthly, I have become the sort of person who appeals, on the internet, for advice on how to take pictures of my lunch :(
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I don't know if I like your lunch, but I know it's art! ;-)
(PS. Are you going slightly mad?)
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I must be going slightly mad, I'll award kudos to just anyone these days ;)
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It was good with duck too.
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Today's lunch wasn't pretty enough to merit the effort - and now I've eaten the evidence :)
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The background is actually our dining table. I have been trying to teach it to swear of late, maybe your filter picked that up.
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