How to photograph food

As I am cleaning out this month I am going through magazines and ripping out pages I want to keep and setting them aside in a box, then sending on the magazines to local areas who could use them. As I was goint through my May 2008 Rachael Ray I found a brief note as part of an article that was..."How to...Photograph Food" and I thought I would put it on here for others too.

From Rachael Ray magazine May 2008 p. 30
It's easy to take photographs as tasty as the dishes themselves, especially with these tips from food photographer Lou Manna:

Reflect Light. Prop a mirror or foil up next to the plate to aim light onto the dish; to diffuse light, prop up wax paper instead. AVOID DISTRACTING BACKGROUND PATTERNS. Stick with solid-color plates and fabrics. GET IN THERE! Most beginners shoot from too far away, Manna says. The food should actually look huge in the camera's viewfinder. (And don't shoot straight on-angles are more interesting.)


Well, maybe I can get better pics of food now that I have these tips of info.

How to make a diaper cake

Part 2 of the Baby Shower:

I wanted to make a diaper cake as a centerpiece, searched and searched, came up with a simple way, with pictures.

Ingredients: Baby bottles, diapers, a few rubber bands, and any trim or decoration you want.

Step 1: Start on some kind of flat surface that you can pick up and carry. The amount of diapers you need depends on the size of the diapers, and the size of the cake you want to make. For the one I made, I used size one diapers and used one large package and a few extra but could have made it with just the one package.

Step 2: You need something to put the diapers around, best thing, a baby bottle.

Step 3: Roll the diapers. Many instructions out there say to place a rubber band around each one, this was completely uncessary. I rolled diapers, you can see about 7 on the first row around the bottle, I placed a rubber band around the outside of those, you just put the rubber band on and squeeze in the diapers into the rubber band. For the second layer, just do the same thing, place a rubber band around your first layer and then squeeze in the rolled diapers into the rubber band. Now your bottom level is ready.

Step 4: Just do the same thing around the top of the bottle. You just use less diapers around this time, so that it looks like cake layers.

If you want more layers, just add another bottle and repeat the steps like you did before.

Now time to decorate however you want. I used an animal theme for the party so I found animal themed ribbon, wrapped it around where the rubber band was showing, and taped it so it would stay. Then I found some animal wood cut outs at Michaels and stuck them in along the ribbon. I also added some blue ribbon with a bow in front to make it a little cuter. The best thing about these is that you can design it however you want, it is relatively inexpensive to make, the mother can use all of the diapers and the bottles, and you have a centerpiece.

By the way, I have never made one before and it only took more maybe an hour at the most. Go for it.

Baby Bingo

I know I am really behind on posts, so I'll start where I left off when I was preparing for a baby shower. I wanted to do baby bingo to keep guests occupied while the mother to be was opening presents. Those guests that got "bingo" would win a prize. I filled in the bingo cards with items from her registry but tried to keep it generic to things that one would find on any registry.

I wasn't willing to pay a chunk of money for this since I could easily do it myself and am offering this up to anyone else who may want to use this, for free. I made 20 different cards so it should be enough for most showers, just print and use.



I printed mine out on different colored card stock (I believe 4 per page) and then I cut the bingo cards apart with scalloped scissors to make it look nice.

hmmm, i cant quite figure out how to put a link to this yet, in the meantime, just email me if you want the baby bingo.