The iPhone 4 & Food Photography: How a Cellphone is Helping This Food Blogger Lighten Up...Literally.

8oz Burger Bar Chorizo Mac & Cheese

So I finally broke down and traded my stone-age "regular" cell phone for an iPhone 4 a couple of months ago. It was life-changing in that, amongst other things, I can get directions to practically anywhere without printing out directions beforehand, and I can show the world what I'm eating or doing with Twitter or Facebook instead of waiting until I get home to blog about it. You know cell phone cameras and blogging in general have come a long way when the photo quality of pictures taken with my phone kick the asses of those taken by my point & shoot when I first started blogging. My how things have changed in 5 years.

The phone's certainly no match for my D300 especially in low light conditions, but it's nice to know that I don't always have to lug a brick around to document my food-capades. Plus my shoulders and arms thank me whenever I leave the DSLR at home. IPhone 4 shooting my meal = no SalonPas later.

I think the iPhone4 takes pretty cool looking pics both au naturel and with apps that give a more vintage feel. All of the following photos were shot using the iPhone 4's 5 megapixel camera with any post-processing done on the phone itself. Not bad for a cell phone camera, right?

Pluots

Tasty Garden Hong Kong Style Waffle

Same Tasty Garden Hong Kong Style Waffle

Tasty Garden Vermicelli with Shredded Duck & Preserved Vegetable

"Santouka Number 1" shot with Hipstamatic

Heirloom LA Jidori Chicken Salad Sandwich and Green Bean Salad at Intelligentsia Pasadena

Intelligentsia iced latte shot with Hipstamatic

Mikawaya Suama shot in low lighting with TiltShift Generator

Mitsuwa West LA packaged bento section shot with TiltShift Generator

Mei Long Village Xiu Long Bao and Bean Curd Sheets w/ Preserved Vegetables edited with CrossProcess

The same Chorizo Mac & Cheese as above edited with CrossProcess

I can also use the nifty front camera to take artsy-fartsy photos of myself with a fork in my mouth. This is the photo that I lost Twitter followers over when I switched out my cupcake-atop-preggo-belly avatar with this for oh, 3 days or so. Like I said earlier, food blogging's certainly come a long way.

Me with fork in mouth shot with IncrediBooth

Phototasting: A Gastrophotoblogging Experience, Checkers Downtown 2/6/2010

For those of you who have been with me since the beginning, do you remember when my food photos looked like this???

Well, it took four long years of experimenting with my photography for sushi to represented in a much better fashion on my blog. (OK fine, I got a new camera, but you know what they say. It's not the camera...) Now, I can make photos of sushi look more like this!


Where was Phototasting when I needed it? If only I had a fun workshop to go to back then when I couldn't take a picture to save my life and knew not a soul in our wonderful food blogosphere. If you can relate to what I went through, you're in luck! By coming to Phototasting--an interactive gastrophotoblogging workshop led my myself and other local food bloggers--you'll have an opportunity to learn and practice basic food photography skills while also getting a small tasting of Chef Todd Allison's winter seasonal menu and meeting new people. This workshop is geared toward both Point-and-Shoot and DSLR users, so don't worry if you don't shoot with fancy-schmancy equipment.

The workshop will be held on Saturday, February 6, 2010 from 12:30-3:00 pm at Checkers Downtown. Please see the media release below for more information. Register soon at http://phototasting.eventbrite.com/ as spaces are limited!



Phototasting

Do you like food? Do you like taking photos? Do you like taking photos of food? Phototasting is a unique opportunity to do all of the above with the guidance of several seasoned Los Angeles restaurant bloggers and the gorgeous new Winter Seasonal Menu of Chef Todd Allison. Not only will you practice capturing the splendor of Chef Allison’s culinary masterpieces, but you will get to savor them as well.

This workshop offers simple tips for both point-and-shoot and DSLR cameras and is geared toward photography of dishes in restaurants. Through hands-on demonstrations, you will learn elementary elements of exposure, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance. The interactive presentation will also introduce core composition and digital post-production techniques.

LA restaurant/food blogger extraordinaire Daily Gluttony, as well as contributors to The Knot and Tripvine.com, will guide attendees through this fun gastrophotoblogging experience. To register, please visit http://phototasting.eventbrite.com/

A newly renovated boutique hotel, the Hilton Checkers Downtown serves as the perfect backdrop for Phototasting. Come to Phototasting to learn elementary restaurant food photography, sample Chef Allison’s delicious and innovative dishes, and experience the cool elegance of the Hilton Checkers Downtown.

Date: Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Time: 12:30pm – 3:00pm

Location: Checkers Downtown, 535 South Grand Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90071

(213) 624-0000

I OD'ed On Cute--Three Apples: An Exhibition Celebrating 35 Years Of Hello Kitty at Royal/T Cafe, Culver City

Leave it to my childhood homegirl Hello Kitty to throw a birthday party of epic proportions.

She's 35 this year folks, and instead of spending a low-profile, quiet evening at home like I did on my 35th birthday, she's going all out with a three-week-long birthday party at Royal/T Café called "Three Apples: An Exhibition Celebrating 35 Years Of Hello Kitty" in which she celebrates 35 years of being cute, fabulous, a style and pop culture icon, and most of all, a good friend to all us girls whose childhood and adolescent years were defined by orange-scented erasers, stamp sets, stationery, and plush toys all bearing none other than Ms. Kitty herself.
Yes, Royal/T's café still had its normal cosplay cafe menu of coffee, tea, sandwiches and snacks, and its waitresses dressed up in those ridiculously cute brown and white maid uniforms, but for this special occasion, they stepped it up a notch with a special Hello Kitty themed menu. I just had to have the Hello Kitty's Kawaii High Tea which included a pot of tea, two tramezzini complete with Hello Kitty grill marks, smoked salmon and spicy tuna canapé, a couple of mini cupcakes donning (*eek*) Hello Kitty rings, a mini brownie and green tea cake, and topped with my favorite...a Hello Kitty sugar cookie! It wasn't exactly a bargain at $25, and not haute cuisine by any means, but so worth all the girly giggles it gave me. Individual Hello Kitty themed food items such as the tramezzini and Hello Kitty shaped pancakes and waffles are also available and just as kawaii.

My husband wanted to order something more manly--as in a burger off the café's normal menu--but he still ate off my tea set. He was too embarrassed to show his face eating the cutesy sandwiches.

Nor did he find it amusing when I asked him to try on one of my Hello Kitty rings.

After we ate, it was time to celebrate some more by exploring the Hello Kitty art and artifacts exhibits at Royal/T. Everything was so freaking adorable that I OD'ed on all the cuteness, died and went to Hello Kitty heaven.

All the artwork was absofreakinglutely insane, and ranged from morbid to fabulous (a la Lady Gaga)

And I wished I could take all the Hello Kitty stuff displayed throughout the gallery home with me.

Look, they even have a Hello Kitty apartment! Every girl needs one of these!

But my absolute favorite part of the exhibition was seeing a ton of vintage Hello Kitty merchandise from the 70's and 80's that I either used to own or remember seeing as a kid. Those were the good old days.

Happy 35th Birthday to my old friend. You haven't aged one bit, and are still as cute as ever. Thanks for all the good times and good memories, and here's to many more happy years to come. Peace and love!

Three Apples is running daily from 10 am to 10 pm at Royal/T Café until November 15th. Please visit my SmugMug album for more photos of my visit to Three Apples!

Three Apples: An Exhibition Celebrating 35 Years of Hello Kitty
(at Royal/T Café)
8910 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
(310) 559-6300
www.royal-t.org
www.sanrio.com/threeapples