Eating Sunday: Breakfast Mechanics

Or, why you don’t want to eat dinner with me on Sundays…

I’ve been wanting to do breakfast for dinner for awhile now, but it seemed a bit overwhelming for the hot days that we’ve been having. Sadly, someone pulled the plug on our summer. Since I’ve had a number of people kindly offer to come and help/eat Sunday dinner here, I thought I’d use this week to illustrate the downside of being a photographer’s assistant and what goes into getting to the actual eating part of all of this.

The place I usually start is cleaning my lenses and setting up any lighting and light modifiers I’ll need. I try to use natural light as often as possible, which requires nothing more than opening the windows. As it is getting darker faster now and I have no desire to eat dinner at three in the afternoon, artificial light in the form of strobes is called for. Sometimes when I don’t want to pull out the heavy equipment, I’ll use speedlights and occasionally lightboxes or candlelight for effect.

I’ve said it before, I have to eat what I’m doing here, so it has to look good and taste good, and I can’t use the standard food photographer tricks for what I’m eating. See the link in my post on Dirty Secrets…

I photograph any of the raw ingredients first if possible, beginning with anything that will wilt, sour, turn brown, or otherwise spoil if it has to sit. Since some things need time to rise, rest, or marinate, fresh herbs are usually at the top of the list as well.

Parsley was chopped (along with basil) for the hashbrowns…

Since the lavender needed to be steeped in melted butter, it was picked, de-stalked, and photographed early as well.

Since I’m working so close to my subject (often the lens is just a couple of inches or so away), tweezers are kept on hand to remove stray bits of stem and twigs in things like these. I also do an average of 10-20 shots for every one that makes it here- better positioning, different lighting, removal of stray seeds or stems or a better wipe down of the plate. Since I’m in control of the scene, I am also more in control of the output. A 20-1 “hit ratio” is really good in comparison with working in the field (e.g. street photography). Thank god for digital technology. This just isn’t as practical when using film.

The fruit salad needed to be mixed, plated, and refrigerated, not only so the flavors could meld together, but so that if I wanted a frosty bowl to photograph, it would be available (I ended up not using it).

Yum! passion fruit has hit the stores lately…

Potatoes were photographed and set aside for the last minute.

Quail eggs were available at the farmer’s market and I couldn’t resist…

Bacon as a raw ingredient came last and was the first to be cooked, since it won’t suffer from sitting or rewarming…

The hashbrowns were shredded and put on to cook. While they were cooking, the eggs were prepped and started, so that everything roughly finished at the same time.

Quail egg omelets are just a little left of a traditional omelet – a tiny bit richer and gamier. I basically wanted it do it because it sounded fun and quail eggs are pretty. It took 10 quail eggs to create a small dinner omelet (7 inch diameter)

Bacon, omelet, and hashbrowns all went down on the plate and were ready to eat warm and the fruit cup was cold. This, potential fellow diners, doesn’t always work out. I opted to not photograph the meal as a whole (I didn’t realize how greasy the potatoes would look, no matter how tasty they were). If I had, the whole thing would have gone cold and would have merited a trip to the microwave- not uncommon.

With time out to enjoy my dinner, I jumped back in to create dessert – lavender buckwheat pancakes with buttered maple syrup.

Because the recipe made far more than I can or want to eat, I had the luxury of creating separate batches for eating and photographing. Here is the original batch that I could take my time with…

I know. Once you get started making pancakes, it’s hard to know where to stop. I’m also obviously not very good at pancakes.

Here are the ones that I actually got to eat (and photographed quickly)…

As a final consideration, I started prepping at about 5pm, I got to eat dinner at around 8pm, dessert at 9 (I clean as I go, but the dishes will be taken care of tomorrow). After editing photos and getting to the end of this rambling blog entry, it is nearly 1am. Now for the floorshow- one of my all time favorite movie scenes… Good Morning!

So in short,

I will cook for you if you ask pretty.

I will give you cooking lessons.

I will give you photography lessons.

But you don’t want to eat Sunday dinner with me.