It's a Penguin Life

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Digital Camera 1: Assignment 3

The third week of the workshop, we discussed aperture and its impact on a photo. Aperture simply put is the opening in which light can pass through. A larger aperture allows more light in and a smaller aperture limits the amount of light. The funky thing with aperture is that the actual numbering system is backwards. A large aperture is a small f-stop number and vice versa.

via Wikipedia

In addition to controlling the amount of light, aperture also controls the depth of field. A large aperture will give result in a shallow depth of field. This means that things behind and in front of your point of focus will be out of focus. A small aperture will give you a large depth of field. Large depth of field will allow for everything in your frame be sharp and in focus, relatively.

I LOVE working with shallow depths of field. I love being able to achieve that creamy blurred background. Now do not get me wrong, it can be over done or done completely wrong, but when it is right, it is oh so beautiful.

Now the secret is not in your camera or your photography skills, but in the lens itself. You have to have a lens that will allow you to open the aperture up really wide. Kit lenses (the one's that come with the camera) do not allow you to. You can cheat by doing two things. 1) Zoom in as far as you can. 2) Get really close to your subject and make sure the background is far enough away from your subject. I am lucky enough to be able to borrow lenses at my leisure from my boss. My standby is a fixed 50mm lens that enables me to go up to f/1.4. I use this lens on all of my baking photos and have started keeping on my camera at all times as it is a great all around lens as well.

The assignment was to play around with aperture by setting up your shot and taking it at multiple aperture settings. Styling food against a distracting background is something that I would not normally do, but it gave the best example of the purpose of the assignment.

Chocolate Nutella Cupcakes.
Photo by me!
Lens: Nikkor 50mm f/1.4

I have to make a confession: I knew all this depth stuff before taking the class.

Monday, April 25, 2011

A Taste of PDX - Broder

A long time ago (try circa 2005), a friend introduced me to a quaint cafe in SE Portland called Henry's Cafe. Til this day, I still remember the drool inducing french toast paired with fresh lemon curd. I swear it was heaven in my mouth. A few years ago, I tried to take Jake back to the same cafe, but to my surprise, it had been replaced by a swedish cafe. The place still looked the same, same tables, same chairs, same open grill, but had a very different menu. It was that day that I was introduced to ebleskivers and have been enamored with them ever since.

I don't remember the name of the cafe, but I know that it is somewhere on SE Clinton St. This morning, while catching up on my blog reading, I came across a photo taken at Broder Restaurant. Of course seeing that the restaurant was located in PDX, I started poking around their website. The menu looked amazing and instantly I was hit with déjà vu. "This menu looks really famililar, I wonder if it's the old Henry's place? I thought to myself. Then I perused the photos they had posted on their website. And wouldn't you know, it IS the old Henry's Cafe!

via Peaches by Plums via b is for bonnie (Photo by Bonnie Tsang).

via Broder

Aebleskivers with lingonberry jam and lemon curd.
via Broder

I wonder if this is the lamb burger Jake ordered?
via Broder

Oh home and amazing food, how I miss you.

Friday, April 22, 2011

No Soup for You!

"No soup for you!!" Seinfeld anyone? Here's a link to clips from the episode.

I am not The Soup Nazi. And I am far from being a cupcake nazi. In fact, I do not possess the ability to tell people "no" (people outside of my immediate family that is).

In order to keep my sanity for the next 119 days, I have decided to take one thing off my plate...baking requests outside of family functions. This morning I put the following message on Facebook and on my webpage:

The Delightful Cakery kitchen will be closed until August 29, 2011. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience.
Every minute between now and August will be focused on completing our handcrafted wedding.
Thank you, Celia.

I love seeing peoples reactions to my sweet treats, but I do not want to add more things to my already too long to-do list. I sat down yesterday and created a list in which I gave myself small jobs to do every single night for the next 30 days. The exception being Tuesday nights since that is 2.5 hours of photography class. It is a bit overwhelming to see that every single night, there is something to work on. But they are small bits of a bigger projects, so it should not be too bad.

via Delightful Cakery

Let us hope that I do not lose any of my baking skills during this hiatus.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Washi, wa-shee

I have been the financial nazi in the house, for the last 20 months. Every time Jake has an idea for the wedding, I ~~say~~ exclaim: "Do you know how much that is going to cost!?!? A. LOT." Yeah, we are kind of backwards from the norm. But what is normalicy?

I think I have finally broke. I just made an impromptu purchase. I always think my purchases through, but not today. I completed the transaction before I gave myself any time to second guess my actions. Weird.

Want to know what I bought? I bet you want to know. I purchased two rolls of washi tape.

Um, what is washi tape? Well, according to Wikipedia, wa means Japanese and shi means paper. Therefore, I purchased Japanese paper tape. I have no idea what I will be doing with it. Your guess is as good as mine. But I just had to have it.

via Tiny Prints Blog.
For ideas on what washi tape can be used for, click the photo above.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Dear Val and Matt

Dear Val and Matt,

Happy WEDDING Day! YAAYYYYYYY! I hope you have a wonderful day that is everything you have dreamed of. I know you you have been working so very hard on it for oh I don't know, maybe like the last 16 months! Have a blast and enjoy every single moment of it.

Photo by me.

P.S. Val - I'll see you on the other side. I'm expecting a full power point presentation on the ins and outs of pulling it all off!

Friday, April 15, 2011

4 months

We are 126 days out! I am this close -->||<-- to freaking out because it seems a bit too real. As we get closer, I'll be hammering out more and more projects. Some I will share with you here, and some I will keep a complete secret until the day of. There is a lot of details, guess that is what happens when you are Type-A and have an eye for details. Wait, was that an oxymoron?

Moving right along...with the done list:

Just days after my meltdown, we found and booked our cinematographer.
We have chalkboard speech bubbles for our faux-to-booth. What is a faux-to-booth you ask? Well, you know what a photobooth is right? You know that box with a camera in it, a small bench that barely fits your ass and half of mine? Oh and it takes photos of you in 4 poses? Well, we are not having a box, but we will have a camera set up for folks to ham it up in front of. Drunk friends with some fun props should end is some hilarious photo keepsakes.
We have mustachios on a stick! Our planner told us to keep it a secret, OOPS!
We, (and by that I mean, our planner) renegotiated our contract with our venue and saved ourselves a ton of money. I saw that the website for our venue had been updated with options that were not there a year ago. Of course I had to follow up on it. Worse case they tell me "no".
I have been working on our ring pillow. I'll show you the trial and the finished product when I finally finish it. Ugh is the word I'd use right now.
My girls and I planned my bachelorette party. Can you say VEGAS!? Sorry, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, at least that's what the saying goes. This will be my first trip out to there EVER. I'm pretty sure that this will be pretty epic.
We purchased my wedding band. More on this when I actually have it in my grubby hands.
We finally have all of the fabric for my Chinese dress picked out. The buttons however remain to big GIANT pain.

Now onto the to-do list:

Suits/Tux rentals
We need to find a tent company. Oh and we may be able to save money by splitting the costs with the couple who are getting married at our venue the very next day.
Welcome dinner venue and caterer
Morning after brunch venue and menu
Transportation
Finalize the centerpieces
Finalize the dinner menu
Print, assemble, and send invitations
The maid of honor still needs a dress
The mother of the bride still needs a dress (do not get me started on this)
Table numbers
Programs need to be designed, printed, and assembled
Menus need to be designed, printed, and assembled
Guestbook - I think I have an idea, just needs to be executed
Cardbox - aiya...another big GIANT pain that I have been avoiding. I may end up outsourcing the project and completely scrapping it to save my sanity.
Chair signage - do we even need signage? seriously?
Welcome packages for out of town guests - oh...there is so much to do for this alone...again, maybe I should just outsource.

I think there is a shit-ton more that goes on the to-do list, but I do not have the brain power, nor do I even want to begin to list them all for my own peace of mind.

Countdown:

5 months

Clearly, we are now days away from the 4 month mark, but to do one post on two months of work might be over kill. So I've decided to break things up. For the most part, you have already read about most of what we did five months out, but I'll relist them as a quick recap.