How to shoot a cake…:)

I am not sure how it all started, but about a year ago I went to this workshop for decorating cakes and I loved it. So naturally – being me – I go home with loads of appliances and stuff to make cakes and – more importantly – to decorate cakes. I must have spend a fortune on all that stuff and I end up using it hardly ever… Anyway; while I was still in the process of actually believing I would be making tons of beautiful cakes everyday (haha) I found this Dutch website forum totally dedicated to people who love making cakes. You can post photos of your beautiful creations there and people can comment on it.
So the first cake I baked at homewas this one

and ok, to be quite honest it was simplicity itself. I had bought a heartshaped cakeform, colored a little bit of icing, used fresh raspberry and a little icing sugar and that was it. O, and I bought some tiny sugar hearts to sprinkle all over. So, as far as the baking and decorating goes, not really something to applaud right?
Anyway, I was still proud of the results, so I posted my photo on the cake-forum only to receive an enormous amount of comments… Not on my cake, but on my photo!!! There goes my ego down the drain.. Haha…
But that did got me thinking on the skills for taking proper photos of cakes and looking at the various posts on the site; there was some serious room for improvement!! It’s not like the people on Flickr on any other photo site that love taking photos. Most of the people on the cake site, love making cake and decorating cake and want to take pictures to show off how their cake looked. So I posted on the forum asking if there was anyone interested in doing a short workshop on how to take photographs of your cakes? And at first, I got a few people that said they had seen my photo and yes, they would be interested. So we set up a date and I believe I had three women in the workshop that very first time.

I try and keep it simple as most people that come don’t know ANYTHING about photography, so I urge them beforehand to make sure to read the manual on a few specific things that we’re going to be practising in the workshop, but that usually doesn’t help. By now I know quite a few settings on a lot of compact camera’s, so if anyone wants to know where their exposure compensation button is. I’m the girl to ask!!
Anyway, those first few women where really enthusiastic and that kind of spread, so now it has become a regular item and I really like teaching these women some very basic, very simple things to improve their photos. It kind of consists of telling them first to not use their flashes. Most have compacts and flash just looks horrible in general but especially on such close range. Then use a tripod if shooting indoors and exposure compensation and reflection. That’s basically the content of my workshop. Well, I ofcourse show them examples of different settings, tell them a little bit about composition and how you can improve your photo simply by looking at what is in the photo! But I still am sometimes a little shocked at how LITTLE some people know about their camera!! I mean, come on…. really nothing?? I know I am kind of technical person for a woman (or so I am told…:)) so I love checking out the latest gadgets and I am very self sufficient when it comes to finding my way around any item. Part of that I guess is because I am after all a photographer, so a little technical knowledge goes a long way.

Anyway, today I had to explain the problems with DOF and compact camera’s. it’s when you try to explain something like that to someone who has no clue about aperture, focal length or sensor sizes or whatever… you realize how much you just simply take for granted.

I took this photo above with my 5D and 100mm macro and asked all of them to take the same photo, same angle roughly with their camera’s. Just to show the difference in outcome for the DOF to make them understand that you cannot get the same results with a Casio Exilim as you can with a Canon 5D. Other then using photoshop tricks, which needless to say, none of them use.
Anyway, I love giving these workshops and already have a long waiting list for the next one (which is only in november due to the move to the new studio) and it’s really nice to see all those improved photos on the forums now!!