so it has come to this

I'm photographing fruit.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I actually set out to photograph a homemade snowflake marshmallow, floating in a cup of creamy hot chocolate. I made the hot chocolate, filled the cup, put the marshmallow in a baggie in my pocket, grabbed my camera, and headed out my back door into the first big snowfall of the year.

I nestled the cup in freshly fallen snow and then proceeded to accidentally dunk half the marshmallow in the hot chocolate.

Now, bear in mind that my hot chocolate/snowflake marshmallow photo vision did not include my pristine white marshmallow being covered in brown hot chocolate. In my hot chocolate/snowflake marshmallow photo vision, the snowflake stayed pristinely white, floating dreamily atop the steaming cup of hot chocolate, its edges slightly melty, but not so melty that you couldn't tell it was a snowflake. Just that perfect, blend the edges amount of melty.

But, here I was with a half white, half brown snowflake marshmallow. I tried to be open minded and proceeded to dunk the entire marshmallow in the hot chocolate in hopes that I could convince myself that brown is the new white, but I'm not gonna lie.

It wasn't pretty.

You can see my dilemma.

I decided to grab the marshmallow out and take it into the house and rinse it off in the sink.

Good plan, yes?

No.

The snowflake was already well on its way to melty, as I'd made the hot chocolate screaming hot because I knew I would be setting it in the snow, thereby potentially hindering its marshmallow melting capabilities.

See how well I plan out my photo shoots?

I bet right about now you're all wishing you could just spend a little quality time in my head.

It's a fun place.

So, since the marshmallow was disintegrating, and rinsing it off in the sink was no longer a viable option, I did what every single one of you would have done, and I tried to lick the chocolate off the top of the marshmallow.

(Don't even try to say you wouldn't have licked the marshmallow.)

Now is probably a great time to survey the audience to see how well you all think that plan worked.


You may be wondering why I didn't just go in the house and grab another marshmallow.

I didn't grab another marshmallow because I only made one snowflake marshmallow. I only made one snowflake marshmallow because it is very difficult to get snowflake marshmallows out of snowflake cookie cutters and still retain the snowflake details. In reality, my marshmallow looked more like a starfish than a snowflake, which I am going to choose to blame on the snowflake cookie cutter instead of the snowflake marshmallow maker.

As you can see by the absence of hot chocolate/snowflake marshmallow pictures, the photo shoot was a total bust, and I ended up standing in the snowstorm, drinking the hot chocolate and licking marshmallow goo off my fingers.

Drinking hot chocolate in the snow may sound dreamy and wonderful, but as I was mad and muttering naughty words in between sips, the whole winter wonderland thing was a little lost on me.

By the way, do I win a prize for using the words snowflake and marshmallow more than five hundred times in a single post?


Okay, since I love you too much to send you off to your weekend with nothing more than slightly lame pictures of citrus and a post about licking a marshmallow, I'm going to share my latest photography discovery with you.

I've always struggled with white balance. I've never been happy with any of the white balance settings (cloudy, shade, etc.), so I've always left my white balance on auto and done my best to adjust the color in Photoshop. Not the best option, by far.

A couple months ago, I hired a photography teacher to help me with a few uber technical photography related things that I wanted to better understand. We also talked about my white balance dilemma, and he showed me how to use a white balance card to correct my photos in post processing.

The top picture shows how my camera took the clementine picture on the auto white balance setting. It was a snowy, gray day, and the lighting was very cold. You can see the heavy blue cast in the picture.


Normally, I would have to warm up the photo in Photoshop in order to get the colors right, but by placing the white balance card in one of my photos, I am able to click the Camera Raw white balance tool on the white balance card in the photo, and Camera Raw then makes the adjustment for the right white balance. I can then synchronize all the other photos taken in those same lighting conditions to that white balance setting.

Clear as mud?

That's what I thought.

I use Photoshop CS5, so I'm not sure if the Elements versions have this feature, but I'm loving the little bit of help it's giving me in color correcting my photos.

So, I'm going to spend my weekend trying to find something more exciting than an orange peel to photograph.

Perhaps rocks.

Or dirt.

Hope your weekend is fabulous!