Experimenting. Trying to Improve.

Bill, who is a fantastic man, knows a thing or two about me. And so, for my most recent birthday, he got me “blogging related things.” Namely, a deck of writing prompts, and two interesting lenses.

The former he said he got me because it means the camera can easily slip into a purse or a backpack. I haven’t been brave enough to try it yet, but typing this post makes me think I might haul it to work.

The later? Well, he got me that one because it’s THE focal length everyone recommends, apparently, for food photos. And I love it. I’m not GOOD with it yet, but I love it.


I took it with me to a mezcal tasting this weekend. And… The photos are not fantastic yet. But it was very cool to start learning, and I thought I’d share some of it. The above is where I did well on figuring out where to position myself for the right focus with the focal length, but not at all well on white balance for good color.


Here, I got the color to an appetizing spot, but the focus is all off. While, yes, the salsa is more tasty-looking than the stems of the flutes, it’s just not really well composed. The stems, given it’s a tasting, might have been better to focus on.


I also took it to our friends’ home for game day. And this might be one of the photos I’m proudest of from the weekend. I love some of the photos of people I have taken this weekend, but I can’t tease apart whether that’s because they are good photos or because I love the people in them. This one just feels relatively nice. I wanted to get a photo where the tiny bubbles in the glass were clear. And I think I got that. As well as nice color.

It’ll be interesting to try to translate all of this to my food and beer photography. I’ve tried a little already; most of the apple sandwich photos were taken with this lens, as I recall. Getting the camera in the right place was a bitch, though.

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