Cookie Photo Shooting with a Smartphone
To shoot my cookies, I usually use my SLR camera (an old Canon EOS Kiss model, more than 10 years old) with a short focal length lens to shoot cookies. Though I know my smartphone(iphone 6s) doesn't have a very good camera, but still I sometimes take some photos of my cookies.
With a SLR camera, I like taking photos of shoot at an angle (diagonally), as in the photos below.
I like the shadows of photos taken from an angle. They feel more solid, which seems to make my cookies look a bit more dramatic.
However, when I take photos with my smartphone from an angle, I need to be careful about one thing. Take a look at the two images below. (Sorry I only had cookies in sealed bags and they are not very good photos anyway...) In the first photo, the cookies in the bottom (foreground) are much larger than in the second photo.
In the two sets of photos above, the first one was taken close to the subject and minimally cropped, and the second one was taken at some distance and widely cropped. Distortion could make some photos unique and interesting, but I don't think it would work for cookies. I think it's better to keep distortion to a minimum unless you have the intention of making the photo distorted.
On the other hand, if the photo is taken from above, there is almost no difference about distortion between the two photos.
By the way, as I mentioned on my Instagram, my older daughter started a blog. (After I started a Blogger blog in English, I suggested that she should try a bilingual blog for both fun and writing practice.) The goal of her blog is not only to show her love for KPOP and BTS, but also to look at the world through them, and to think about various social issues.
This time, she wrote about some Japanese people's reactions to the Yahoo News article about BTS's statement protesting Asian hate. I'm sure this isn't the major opinion in Japan, since most Japanese Yahoo News comments are by a lot of right-wingers and haters, which is the known fact. Still, the comments here just criticizing Korea make me feel gloomy. It's hard to believe that conflicts between Japan and Korea as well as between China and Japan will be eliminated one day. It may be just idealistic to believe that Asians can be in solidarity beyond these problems, don't you think the world becomes so depressing if even young people don't have ideals?
Thank you for the great tutorial. It really gave me an interesting perspective on cookies photos, that I am sure applies in general to food / food as art photography and challenges me to explore and experiment.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, your daughter's post is so interesting and eye opening. I knew about some of the issues that create a wedge between the three countries, but I wouldn't have imagined that people cannot get past these differences when they are facing such a monstrous common threat. Maybe people in Asia should understand that people in the West, unless they have an interest in anything Asian, like K-pop, Anime or Chinese dramas and so on, and even then, do not differentiate between Japanese, Chinese or Korean. So at least for once they should put the hard feelings aside and stand a common ground.
In the end, it is probably human nature, because it is not the only case in history - there is a saying that resisted the centuries from the Romans ,after all: "Divide and rule". But although I have no direct involvement in the situation, as I am neither Asian or American, reading about the things going on makes my heart ache and it seems it's never ending.
There is some glimmer of hope though, when I read articles like your daughter's, that show maturity of thought beyond the adults' (who should be models, but oftentimes are negative models) and also prove that BTS use their influence for good. I wonder if a pop star before them had such a positive impact and a social responsible public attitude. They certainly are special and I am not even an "army", I just used to listen some of their songs with a social message, because they were an exception back in the day in K-pop. Food for thought and topic to be researched on a cold April weekend.
Thank you for reading my blog and my daughter's! It is said that 80% of Japanese Yahoo News comments are by Japanese males in their 40's and they are right wing and biased. What I'm really disgusted about is most of their comments are so childish and not constructive at all. I feel young people are more flexible. She knows what happened between Japan and Korea during the war and after the war, and it doesn't stop her loving K-pop. I said BTS members seem to have too much physical contacts, almost intimacy to each other but she doesn't care, she said she sees boys like that at school and no one cares.
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