Black, White and Red.

It's always nice to be alerted to an email bing on the old iPhone while just coming to in the morning. This little bing was for a Convo from Corky's Cookies to tell me that I was in one of her Treasuries. It's a real beauty too!

Have a Merry Little Christmas
by Corky's Cookies

Red and Brown Delicious

I haven't curated a Treasury for ages and as food has been on my mind, lips and hips lately, I thought I should put a food flavoured one together, so I give you:

Red and Brown Delicious from the Photographers of Etsy

My Most Interesting

I've always kept an interesting eye on which of my photos the big, clever computers at Flickr think are the 'most interesting'. So I've made a mosaic of my top 100 Most Interesting. I'm always amused that out of the thousands of pictures I have at Flickr, it's often the ones of food and graffiti which come out on top. Many of the food ones are perfectly nice pictures, but just as many have been taken on mobile phone cameras, or in very dim light or just aren't very good at all, but they still get masses of hits. It's the ones from the big name restaurants like El Bulli and the Fat Duck so I suppose people read about them and then Google them and my pics come up pretty high up the image searches, it's not particularly flattering, but I shouldn't complain. As Flickr has such good stats it's interesting to see what's going on, for example one of my Banksy shots from Liverpool got about 5,000 views in one day. I've not managed to find out why. It wasn't on the front page of Explore (as far as I know) and I didn't get many comments. Very odd.

See all of these images bigger and clearer here.

Excess

The excesses of the season have finally kicked in. Friday was our 'office' lunch at Carluccio's which was rather nice and not a slice of overcooked turkey in sight! We had friends round on Saturday night and I cooked smoked gammon for the very first time (boiled then glazed and roast) and it was utterly delicious, and I'll definitely do it again. 

Sunday was our annual champagne and lobster lunch with friends, they put on a magnificent spread of lobster, crab, prawns, smoked salmon, gravadlax, assorted mayonnaise, sour dough bread, caviar with vodka, then a salad course, then prune and Armagnac tart, mince pies and chocolates. All washed down with indecent amounts of Champagne (2 magnums) and a healthy selection of the six bottles of Prosecco my mother supplied. It was splendid. I was very glad indeed to get to the gym this morning to undo a little of the damage!

Bicycle!Bicycle!Bicycle

by Jan Morales Photography

And there was also a Treasury West by Jan featuring my Mansion House print. Thanks Jan!

The Children are Overstimulated
by Jan Morales Photography

Seaside Beauties

Here's a lovely seaside Treasury picked from the offerings of the European's on Etsy and it's a great collection.

European Street Team
by Lasidi

I love the Ti Amo photograph from Eleanor - I wonder if it was posed or just a lucky find?

Lasidi is a jewellery maker from Granada in Spain and her shop if full of goodies, I especially like the felted pieces which she combines with some unusual stones and materials to make very original looking items. I seem to becoming attracted to felt lately, I've not really given it a lot of thought but recently I've been noticing masses of the stuff on Etsy and it's all used in a really original way. The featured seller last week had some stunning things, it was her felted acorns which I fancied and one shop I've been in love with for a while sells the most delicious looking felted pebbles and beads.

Gone and Forgotten

I've been updating my website a bit today, I feel it's been rather abandoned lately, I've been adding some photos from my recent trips to Spain and the Isle of Wight, I've not added too many, as they're not exactly the best photos I've taken and I try to be selective on Eyeshoot - after all, I do have Flickr for posting a much wider range of photos.

One gallery I've been filling out a bit more is the one called Gone and Forgotten, it's for photos of abandoned graves, headstones and flowers at the Southern Cemetery which is just over the road from my home. It's the most amazing place and I'll happily spend hours in there taking pictures and even went blackberry picking there this summer (several jars of blackberry jelly and a cobbler were the tasty results). I find the bare graves with remnants of real flowers or faded bunches of plastic flowers incredibly beautiful, mournful and sad. When I first started to go there I'd concentrate on the damaged lead letters on the stones, the ones where many letters had dropped off as I found that I liked the resulting graphic effects, the way that some randomly formed words really stood out.

It's been a while

I can't quite believe how long it's been since I've blogged. The computer problems still haven't been resolved and I don't have access to my entire catalogue of photos which is rather irritating to say the least. I've have a few shoots since I 'lost' everything so I've had some new stuff to work on, but it's not the same as not having my whole collection at hand.

Sales were good a couple of weeks ago, lots of card sets, two or three to a customer which was great, hopefully they'll be back for more, some custom print orders and quite a few items from my other shop, Inter Alia too. Now it's gone dead, but I suppose postage times to America have run out now and I don't have anything Christmasy at all. Let's hope the good sales continue in the New Year.

I've also not been checking the Treasuries for ages and today sort of remembered about them and found my Mansion House print in a nice POE one - it's always nice to have my work picked by another photographer!

Surprise
By Alison Du Bois

A touch of summer in the winter.

Wheat

by Salutation Creation

I love to see a good summery colour scheme in these cold, dark and wintery months. This is a beauty.

TRACERY
by Three Girls and a Goat

Now here's a really original collection of goodies from a shop with a brilliant name! I'm usually impressed with the overall appearance of Treasuries but often there's not a lot that I actually want to click on and investigate further. This one is full of really cool items -

The Colour Letter Card by A View To is great, her shop has some really great colour themed cards, like the one below. I love the collections of items she's photographed for each one and I can't understand why she's only sold three items.

The pierced disk, rings and tiny berries necklace by kathiroussel is just the sort of thing that I'd wear (it's now firmly in my favourites - hint hint). The photographs of it are really original too.

And finally the Love - Original Text Based Painting from Simon's Gallery is just up my street too, I'm a real sucker for texts.

Busy

I've finally got my CS3 suite back on my Mac so work has finally commenced! I'm teaching myself In Design from Adobe as Quark is always a real pain to reinstall after a technical meltdown. I remade templates for a couple of sets of cards in it yesterday as I discovered that the cards I'd sold I'd not made some of the images as PDFs from the Quark layouts and I couldn't open them up in the old version of Quark which I had installed again. It wasn't so hard really, I like learnign new software.

So the cards and prints from yesterday are almost done and will be in the post to their new owners today.

Creamy by chicalessia

This is a really pretty Treasury, I do like the way that the colours are grouped together over a whole range of items. I think that it's very well done!

Front Page!

Etsy FP 11_24_08 1730 PST lillyella, originally uploaded by brenda // phydeaux designs.

My second Fromt Page appearance in two days! It's the bottom left print which is a bed of thin silver birch trees outside Tate Modern in London.

I've had some sales at last - five items to two customers. I'll be kept busy today.

tripple TWIST

by Kelly Baldwin Designs

Kelly's shop is full of sweetie coloured goodies, all the photographs of her jewellery are really striking and make a totally coherent look to the whole shop. The pieces all have a lovely smooth curvy look which really appeals to my taste. I this particularly like this necklace and it's relly refreshing to see jewellery which isn't stupidly underpriced, which I always feels reduces the percieved value of items. If I'm going to buy something as a treat or a gift I like to feel that the maker values their work as much as I value mine.

CHACO CANYON NECKLACE - $50

Apple, dapple, YOU

by Lillyella

Lillyella sells really pretty jewelery - I don't really suit pretty, but these pieces are really interesting using glass flowers, and I really like these ones. I'm a great fan of matte black and that's one colour you don't see very often in jewelery, especially flowery jewelery and such a bargain too.

Pretty Posy Earrings in Matte Black $13

Hurrah - A Front Page!

Frontpage 11/23/08 11:55 pm PST yoom, originally uploaded by kwaraw.

A first time Front Page for my Dandelion Puff Print. No sales yet, but new hearts and views.

Thanks to Kwaraw for uploading it to Flickr.

Back home

So I'm back from Spain and I still don't have my photos on my Mac. The re-install stalled at 2GB and then hung there for the whole week while I was away. I've texted my Geek and he has yet to reply. I think he'll be able to talk me through the re-install on the phone which is fine and then it will take a couple of days to do it's thing if it works properly. iTunes doesn't see to like me either since this happened, I've re-installed all my music but iTunes won't open as it says it's on a 'locked disc' and I don't have access. The same for all the Mac applications. CS3 creative suite doesn't work either, neither does Quark7. Lightroom is okay as I managed to get a fresh download from the Adobe site but I've no photos to use in it.

I've had enquiries about custom prints and cards which I can't fulfill as I can't get to the original images and I'm concerned how long these lovely prospective customers will wait. I don't really want to tell them that my computer has had a seizure and that I'm incapable of fixing it, it just doesn't seem very professional.

Anyway, I've sold some more Soviet Posters and relisted them at a slightly higher price and increased the quantity of posters from three to five. At least the things in my Inter Alia shop are all ready to go.

Sad Mac

When I went to check my life on my iMac on Wednesday morning, all was not well as the pretty swirly screensaver had frozen.  I nudged my mouse and tapped my keyboard and nothing stirred. Off I went to my spin class and hoped that it would all be better by my return.  Needless to say, it wasn't and I've had to reinstall my buggered hard drive, erasing all of my info in the process.  I wasn't too happy about this as you can imagine but as we have a super dooper Time Machine/Time Capsule Back Up system on our network which seems to back up every couple of hours all of it's own accord, I wasn't too bothered.  Silly me.  It's been a nightmare and I can't get my stuff back.  I've managed to download my lovely Lightroom 2 after being talked through it by a charming young man at Adobe Support so at least I can deal with today's sales if the images are in Flickr as I can download them at full size from there and hopefully get my printer drivers installed again so at least I'll be able to print.  Our genius tame geek who has installed everything here including the back-up system is coming over tonight and I'll have all of my extremities firmly crossed that he can find my pictures which also include all of my formated prints which are saved as PDFs for nice easy printing, templates for cards which took me an age to work out in Quark Xpress (I've got the discs for that, so at least I can have that back).  To add to all of the agro, we're off on holiday tomorrow for a week to mum's place in Spain and if this issue is left unresolved, I'm afraid that I may be somewhat unbearable as I mentally go through everything that I've lost.

Bleargh.

Snoopy and romance

After selling two of my recycled spiral bound notebooks yesterday, I've made two more.One more Snoopy one and this time, a Mills and Boon one. There's been loads on the tv recently about M&B as it's, amazingly, their 100th anniversary and it sort of reminded me about them. They have the most phenomenal sales figures, it's somethig crazy like one book selling every six seconds! I read millions of them while at school but haven't touched one since. I came across some in a charity shop and came over all nostalgic, bought them and have had them sitting around for a while until yesterday when one of them became reborn!

For sale here at the bargain price of $24

For sale here also at the bargain price of $24

Both books have about 50 pages of recylced/found/rescued papers from various places. Some are plain, some are violently patterned but they all work rather nicely together. I hope these sell as I really like making them!

Alternative techniques

[Alternative]
by Xenya

It's great to see a collection of alternative photographic styles together, it's a really nice diverse Treasury with some lovely moody images.

Inter Alia on the Front Page

Etsy Front Page 9/20/08 shevaun, originally uploaded by Etsy Front Pagers.

I really must check the goings on with my Inter Alia goodies, after finding the lovely Treasury (see previous post), I've just searched the Flickr Front Page Group and found that my battered Penguin book was there in the top left corner. I've sold it and I wonder if it was because of the front page exposure?

This is not a Photo Opportunity - Print

I really have no idea why I've never made a print from this iconic piece of Banksy. Anyway, better late than never, here it is!

Caught just in time

As you may have noticed, there are plenty of Treasury appearances for my photos, but very few for my Inter Alia goodies, firstly I think it's because they just aren't as eyecatching as the photos and secondly, I hardly ever check. Today I checked and found this great collection of manly things!

Eyecandy
by Kaisanna

Kaisanna's from Finland and is a buyer rather than a seller, so I can't show you any of her creations!

Lest We Forget

Remembrance Sunday 2008 Manchester.

Weekend and This Week

Here's a lovely Treasury with lots of gorgeously atmospheric browns, I particularly like Tiny Snowbird and Hopes.

Past Meets Present

by Mist Flower Studio

On Sunday I went to the Manchester Rememberance Day Service to see if I could get any decent snaps and I'm not quite sure if I did or not. I got there late as I was enjoying breakfast with our Cambridge friends too much and only really decided to go out at the last moment.....So I was sort of stuck at the back of the crowd and wasn't really inclined to shove my way to the front so I skulked around with my long lens shooting the backs of peoples heads until my hands started to freeze. Eventually everyone elses hands started to freeze and the crowd bagan to clear so I had a better view. I was there for about an hour and a half. I'll sort through the pictures today.

I've also been fancying having a go at Digital Pinhole photography and finally managed to buy a body cap for my D300 so that I can make my lens. Hopefully I'll get that done today and then I'll start to experiment and see if I can actually get some images!

Red

Here's my lovely new Treasury full of red and white goodies - lovely on another dull morning!

Red and White
by Eyeshoot

Warming Winter Food

We had friends from Cambridge to stay in a fleeting visit this weekend and I was in the mind to make a nice warming and seasonal dinner. My father had just given me the delicious and beautifully designed Leon: Ingredients and Recipes book which I was reading with glee and mentally bookmarking more recipes than was possible to cook in one day (planned lunch of homemade flat breads, Sicilian salad, roast pumpkin humous and sweet potato falafel none of which was technically difficult, but what with proving the bread for two hours, roasting potatoes and baking falafells, the logistics had me floored and we wouldn't have eaten until tea time. So we gave up on that plan and went to our favourite Indian cafe - Al Faisals for a quick and dirty lunch instead - delicious as usual). So I just and supper to think about, shop for, prep for and get in the mood for. The winning Leon recipe was Sausages with Flageolet Beans and Kale which I can confidently report as a blinder of a recipe. I made it just as directed (as I generally do with a new recipe) just adding extra garlic. We already had three different sausage types in the fridge from our excellent local butcher, Axons of Didsbury, Peter had bought them earlier in the week but couldn't remember what they were apart from one with visible chunks of black pudding speckling the pale sausage meat. So our creamy, sweetly beany, sausagy casserole was full of chunks of three varieties of butchers bangers, apart from the black puddingy one there was one which had the distinct tang of fennel seeds and the other was I think, just a plain un-messed with porker. Delicious. We had the leftovers for lunch today with the addition of some dark brown mushrooms and a sprinkling of peas.

For pudding I wanting something quick and easy as I can't generally be bothered with puds apart from my utterly divine French chocolate mousse which really is one of the most gorgeous and luxurious things I've ever eaten - but I made than last weekend. I fell back on a tried and tested old favourite from Alastair Little's book Keep It Simple: Fresh Look at Classic Cooking - Compote of Winter Fruits. Which is a divine smelling, jewel coloured sticky delight which is the real essence of autumn. Pears are poached in an aromatic syrup of red wine, cinnamon, star anise, lemon zest, peppercorns, vanilla pod with added dried apricots and prunes which have been plumped up in sweet Lapsong Suchong tea.

Why no Food?

Considering this blog is called 'Photography and Food' I occasionally feel a pang of, not quite guilt, more confusion as to why there is almost no mention of food on here at all. Food is my main passion in life, more than taking snaps, more than going to the gym and even more than Grey's Anatomy. So I have poked myself with a few small sharp sticks in an effort to put some of my lengthy conversations, ponderings and cooking in type right here. It's a non new year resolution. I can't fill my whole endless blog with endless Treasury screencaps however much I appreciate being in every single one and how lovely I think they all are. So there you go. A new slant.

From tomorrow.

But for now:

Here's an old favourite foodie post from more or less a year ago to get me in the mood:



I was given a bin liner full of prickly sloes by a generous friend whose larder is already groaning under the weight of home made goodies.

She said “it’s really easy, but takes a while”. No kidding.

So this is what you need.
Sloe berries
Small, sharp poking implement
Caster sugar
Gin – lots of gin
Kilner jars, or other large containers, sterilized
Patience
Entertainment.

Settle down at a large table, empty out your bin liner of spiky fruits; put the radio on because you’re going to be here for a while.

Pluck the sloes from the branches, trying no to puncture yourself in the process, they are very sharp. I didn’t bother with any which were obviously mouldy or squishy, but I did include them if they were split.

Discarding the branches once the berries are off makes the whole thing a bit neater and it’s encouraging to see the massive heap grow smaller.

Once all the sloes are in a bowl together looking lovely, clear your table of spiders, leaves and other creepy crawlies which will be looking to make a home for themselves in yours.

Leave the sloes in some cold water and wait for all the leaves, twigs and corpses to rise to the surface and remove.

Try to scrape the welded on purple sloe stickyness from your hands and under your fingernails (mine stayed put for about two days).

Drain the berries and when you can face it, sit back at the table, with more entertainment and ideally a darning needle, although I can’t think of one single person I know who would actually possess such an object. I used a cocktail stick.

Laboriously remove each sloe, one by one, individually, by itself, from the glistening purple pile and poke with your little wooden stick, lovingly place in a clean bowl. Repeat about 20,000 times until your back aches, your fingers are stiff and sticky and you consider breaking into the three bottles of gin luring you to their shelf.

Take a deep breath, have a walk, have some chocolate, watch CSI.

Finish stabbing the sloes.

Now the science bit – you need 1-2oz of castor sugar for each pint of gin, more if you like it sweeter and less if you like it dryer. I have no idea how I like it so I used about 1.75 oz if I did the calculations right. These quantities are from the BBC website, blame them not me if it’s horrible. It’s my first time and I trust them…..

Sterilize the containers by putting through the dishwasher, heating in the oven or pouring in boiling water.

Drive down the road to replace the jar you have just cracked by pouring boiling water into it and repeat the process with slightly less than boiling water and placing a long metal spoon in the jar, just as your mother always told you to do.

Continue.

With great satisfaction, carefully pour the sloes into your first container, watch out for them rolling all over the floor as they make a terrible mess when you tread on them and walk them around the rest of the room on the bottom of your shoe.

Measure and pour one pint of gin onto the berries and then add however much sugar you’ve decided to use in too. Give it all a bit of a mix around and continue adding gin and sugar to the berries until all are covered in all of your containers. Leaving a little space at the top of the container makes mixing easier.

Seal the containers and hope that the seals work better than mine did. If they don’t, mop up the gin which will squirt out from under the ‘waterproof’ seals and top up again.

Keep in a dark, cool cupboard for three months, turning every couple of days initially and then less frequently later on so that the sugar is evenly distributed. Don’t wait for longer than six months to decant, it won’t benefit from longer.

If you haven’t forgotten about them in three months time, strain the berries from the sweet, pungent, purple gin and rebottle into sterilized bottles (don’t forget the spoon if using the hot water method), add a few sloes to the bottle for artistic effect and keep some for adding to casseroles. Wrap prettily as gifts or hide at the back of the cupboard and keep for yourself.

Red, Black and White

Red, Black and White

by Miamiamia

New print, new Treasury and isn't it a beauty - red black and white go together so perfectly (my next Treasury is red and white). Miamiamia is from Turkey and makes really intricate beaded cuff bracelets - work which I could never do without serious patience and magnification. This one is just lovely:

Sexy Silver and Black Squares Peyote Stitched Beaded Cuff Bracelet for $55 from Miamiamia.

Water Water Everywhere.

I saw that the Treasury were getting down to the magic 333, so I started to faff around with a new Poster Sketch when I spotted that the next expiry was in three days, so I decided to take my time. Stupid really. By the time I'd finished (and it didn't take me long), the lists were up in the 600s - I'd been looking at the columns sorted the wrong way round. Oh well, next time.....

Anyway, one of my photos from Japan is in a really atmospheric watery collection:

Water is Life
by Honey Tree

Honey Tree has some beautiful pictures of her own, she's got a great eye and a lovely evocative colour palate.

And here's a great collection of pink and blue photos - there's one in both of the collections in this post - obviously a popular photograph today!

{{Click Click}}
by Felicity Crew

Felicity's from Vienna - a beautiful city with the best cakes, I think she's the only person I've seen on Etsy from Austria....I would imagine that such a gorgeous country would be bursting with photographers! She's got some really pretty beach hut images in her shop, lovely and pale and serene - I've always had a soft spot for beach huts. I'm pretty sure they don't have those in Austria...

Busy busy busy

I've been making some new prints today which has been fun - I love looking back through my photo library and revamping some old favourites or seeing previously discarded images in a different way. They are all very different from eachother and I wonder if this will be a problem. There's such a 'look' on Etsy for the big selling photographers and I really don't seem to be able to get into that texutred, washed out, romantic thing which seems to be what you need to be doing to sell lots of prints. I love the look, but I really prefer bright images althoguh I am enjoying playing around with desaturated images from time to time, it's a very forgiving technique. Mind you, I do plenty of Viewfinder images but they've not been big sellers for me either. No sales for weeks now..... I wonder if it's it me or you?





Also a Treasury first - two prints in one!

Don't be Shy, Come on In
by Make Your Presents Felt

A fantastic shop with a great name. I really didn't know that I liked felt things until I started to notice it on Etsy.....

New photos from London

We had time to spare in London before and after our Champagne guzzling trip. I've finally sorted through my pictures and here are few of my favourites.