The Penalty Box

On the order of ridiculous desserts, this isn't the craziest thing I've seen. However, with a name like Toastbox, it's pretty damn awesome already. I've been told this was consumed by one person in one sitting, and no, it wasn't a giant fat guy. To the contrary, it was a Chinese girl who had the waistline of a stop sign pole. It's always the skinny ones...

Anyway, you'll notice a bit of grain in the background due to the high ISO, but since the foreground is the focus, the grain is of little consequence. Besides, if you have to start worrying about noise in your photo, it's probably not very interesting in the first place. Of course, you may find food boring too, so in the end, it's all subjective.

Would I recommend eating this? Not by yourself. Don't listen to the fat person voice inside of you. But to share, it's pretty good. Even the bread is a little sweet, which I suspect comes from a little extra honey in the dough. Get this at Flo Tearoom. Seriously, go eat there. Great cafe.

f/2.0, 1/80sec, ISO 1600

Babies are amusing creatures. I haven't been responsible for one for any significant amount of time, nor have I had any fluid other than saliva end up on my person as a result of holding a mini-human, so my views on babies may be coloured to the positive end of the spectrum. Despite the inherent danger of projectile bodily fluids (note tongue firmly planted in cheek), I do enjoy taking photos of the little buggers.

With babies, there's a large amount of honesty in their expressions. When they smile, they are genuinely happy. When they cry, they are genuinely upset. And when they give you an expression like my friend Ryan's daughter gives me here, they are genuinely confused. Said confusion probably had to do with my crouching in an odd manner with what surely looked from her perspective like a large black object growing out of my face. Anything for the shot, right?

(Hey, at least I didn't get puked on.)

f/4.0, 1/500th sec, ISO 200

Sunset is one of the best times to take photographs. The setting sun does all sorts of fun things to the colours in the sky and the opaqueness of the clouds provided some patterns that are neat to look at. If I did this again, I'd probably re-compose to include more of the sky, since that's the interesting part. I took the rule of thirds a bit too literally for this one.

f/3.5, 1/60th sec, ISO 200

Not having a proper macro lens for my DSLR, I never really experimented with food photography much. I have started setting up a makeshift photo booth for food with some poster board, but that's not so good for restaurants or friend's houses. I got myself a little S95 for general carry-around purposes, and it's got a macro function.

This was an early attempt at food photography. Chocolate fondue has some neat reflective properties due to the oil content in it, while the rest of the dark colour of the chocolate absorbs light, providing a nice contrast. The crepe made a nice base to pool the chocolate onto and still pick up to eat. Don't worry, I added some celery to make it healthy.

f/2.0, 1/25th sec, ISO 800

One of the things I love about photography is the moments of serendipity you come across in life that you can capture through the lens of your camera. This was a cold (by Vancouver standards) winter in New York and this was a small pond in a garden I was strolling through. What would've made this better is if the sign was half buried in the ice, but this still amused me greatly.

f/5.6, 1/2500th sec, ISO 400