My first written post on this blog!

I'd almost forgotten I had to go for this session. My fellow foodies from Famished in Arabia (our food blogger consortium) had organized a photography session at Baker & Spice at Souk Al Bahar. Luckily, Arva's super-organized skills saved the day. She'd sent out a reminder which initially made me groan because I'd forgotten I had to wake up early on a Friday (nothing new though; my Mom rarely lets me sleep in haha) and drive all the way to Dubai Mall.

Can't be happier that I went though.

Here's what I figured out during the session:

Wait, that's a triangle showing the relationship of sorts between the ISO, shutter speed and aperture.

Now for practical application. For the uninitiated, I have a point-and-shoot, a Canon Powershot SX120 IS and it's a really handy camera because it's got manual mode as well so I am able to tinker with the photos I take to a certain extent.

Below each photo gallery I will explain what it is I did.

I shot these on aperture priority and focused on the brown sugar cube further away from the camera. The first image was shot at f/2.8; the second at f/8.0; and, the third at f/4.5. If you notice, the brown sugar cube closer to the camera is where you'll see the difference. The aperture level controls how wide the opening of the camera lens is and affects the depth of field. A higher aperture (so in this case f/2.8) gives a shallow DOF and a lower aperture (in this case f/8.0) gives a greater DOF. From what I understood a higher aperture has a smaller numerical value and vice versa.

Then we muddled on to exposure levels. Here I shot on P mode and did nothing but shift my exposure levels which controls the amount of light falling on the sensor. I think this is an excellent way for me to shoot food in restaurants, especially since so many of them have dim lighting that isn't very conducive for photo-taking. And flash photos (At least for me) turn out absolutely ridiculously bad! So...here are the exposure levels for the photographs: first is +1, second is +2 (these are over-exposed photographs), third is 0 therefore according to the camera sensor, it's perfectly exposed. Fourth is -1 and fifth is -2.

This one is all about using Photoshop. I do admit I haven't done the post-processing really well and to be honest, I wasn't meaning to. I was trying to experiment with different PS tools and here are my random results. The first photograph is the original (Taken on P mode, with a +1 exposure level if anyone's interested). Then the next two are my attempts at, one, using layers and Gaussian blur and erase tool; and, two, using Bridge to open the JPEG in RAW mode (which worked wonderfully!) and totally blaspheming the photo then on.

This gallery is also another attempt at Photoshop. First one original, next one layered and blurred and erased and compressed.

And THAT is the wonderful lightbox, owned and made and used by the one-who-lives-in-a-frying-pan (Arva!) which I think I will soon attempt to make at home.

I learned A LOT from this session. There's something to be said about being explained things in layman's terms and having food as subjects to practise theories on! Massive thanks to Arva and Sukaina for explaining many things (Sukaina also did a food styling talk; if only I was patient enough with my food photos to follow her lovely suggestions!) and answering everyone's questions patiently.

And to the lovely Baker & Spice for letting us shout out words like "APERTURE!", "PHOTOSHOP!", "COOKIES!" and click away to our heart's content while gobbling on their fare, thank you.

Here's to learning more! *cheers*