perník

by julie posted December 19, 2011

I got a lovely little surprise from a friend at the weekend, after he heard about my love of gingerbread/pepparkakor/lebkuchen and i was handed a little box containing this, baked by his mum and known locally as ‘perník’.  I managed to hold off with the nomming long enough to take a couple of pictures :)

Since I’ve written a bit about styling here before, I thought I might show you a bit of ‘behind the scenes’ stuff and the sequence of messing that led to the shot i chose.  I’ve built up a small collection of props, so first i picked out a white plate and the blue patterned one to layer up to try and add some interest:

It’s too plain, though. Let’s take away the white plate and see what they look like just on the patterned one:

I like that better. But it needs something else. Something in the background maybe? I’ll have to change the angle a bit from looking so straight down on the plate though:

A great excuse to bring out that vintage silver spoon i got from etsy! I need to fiddle with the composition and add a bit more detail…

Doilies, and a dusting of icing sugar, and I pulled the cup in a bit. I was happy with this styling, and then I tried the portrait orientation to have the cup less cut off in the corner, and there’s the shot at the top of the post.

I don’t know if that’s of any interest to anyone, I just noticed when i was going through the memory card that there was a definite linear progression of how the final shot came together and thought it might be worth posting. Do you have any ideas about styling like this? What’s your process?

7 Responses to perník

  1. I love it, particularly the idea of adding icing sugar for detail. Also, in the straight-on shots the slightly out-of-focus cookies look odd but from the lower angle it really adds to it.

    I think I might prefer the final landscape shot to the portrait, possibly because of the stronger diagonal.

    Urgh… what am I doing! You see, this is the sort of rambling, camera-club-esque discussion you get when you post a series like this.

    In short: lovely, yummy, delicious.

    • Well, that’s also the case when it comes to this situation where I’m there with complete and utter control over the subject as well as the camera, it’s easy to get bogged down in changing minute details to get it ‘just so’, and when you have 5 options, you might choose a different one on a different day, or ask 5 people and each would choose a different one. I suppose it’s just that you have to have a level that you want to get to and when you get there, leave it alone!

  2. My process would almost certainly be eat first, regret not taking the pictures at my leisure later.

    Nice work and great self control there..

  3. I may have nibbled quite a few and these survived only because I hid them from myself in the car :-)

  4. Actually I think your choice of portrait over landscape was spot on. In the tall shot the cup is more defined as a cup even though it’s oof and the yummy cakes need a cuppa to complete the picture.

  5. best wishes for christmas and the new year

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