Comments on photo assignment #13

[billz]

Please place your comments in this thread.

Bill

[billz]

Wow Nancy - that looks delicious! Hope you've saved us all a piece. Nice photo too ... hope you win the recipe contest.

Bill

[NMarti]

Thanks Bill - the entry was mailed Friday so hope it's a winner.

Mary - if we could get my strawberry cake and your chocolate fountain together that would be a winner! :D

[Mary]

Good Morning Nancy - I agree YUMMM :D Good luck in the recipe contest!:)

[NMarti]

Hey - where is eveyone's pictures on assignment #13? I can only see mine. I posted mine on imageshack but I think everyone else did too. Is it just my computer or did something happen to them? (honest - I didn't blow up pixentral or anything to get rid of them):D

[kayser]

Nancy- I think it's an Image Shack thing, because I've been having trouble on and off for the last couple of days posting there and viewing the images that people are appending to their posts. Your cake shows up sometimes and then it's gone! :mad:

[Mary]

I was experiencing the same thing. Pixcentral was having problems so I switched to Imageshack. Things will be better tomorrow (in my best Scarlett O'Hara voice):)

[NMarti]

Phew.... thank goodness - I was afraid someone ate them all :D

[karen donnybrook]

Nancy, it looks great and yes I can see it through ImageShack.

Mary, where did you say Bellgia Hotel is? or aren't you going to tell?

Kev, I don't think I will try cat food!!

[Mary]

Good Morning Karen
The Bellagio hotel is here in Las Vegas and it is a marvelous place. They have a "lake" in front of the hotel that has a zillion fountain nozzles in it. They do a musical water display - dancing waters - every 20 minutes in the evenings. Inside the hotel they do fabulous displays in the atrium for all the different seasons. The Christmas display came down and now it is Chinese New Year.:)

[karen donnybrook]

Sounds wonderful Mary. What season/celebration was the chocolate fountain for?

[billz]

Karen - Bee food certainly qualifies ... way to think 'outside the hive'.

Mary - Nice shot. I'm not even a chocolate fan and that looks good.

Kev - Not sure if you or the kitty got the worst of the deal.

Judy - Thanks for posting your shot. It's nicely done .. I like the rich background.

Robyn - Great entry! You didn't make William blow out the candles did you? Seems like at 14 you might get a pass.

Now I've gotta stop looking at yours and get started on mine!

Bill

[Robyn]

Mary, I just adore chocolate............that fountain was just something else. And Nancy, I can't even imagine that strawberry cake and chocolate fountain TOGETHER.....it's enough to give me a coronary.:D :D
Cheers,

[Mary]

Hi Karen - sorry I missed your question about the season that the Chocolate fountain was for. Actually that is a permanent part of the candy shop that is in the lobby. They also had a 150 pound chocolate dog covered in 24 carat gold leaf.
http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/5673/chocolatedog7xh.th.jpg (http://img505.imageshack.us/my.php?image=chocolatedog7xh.jpg)

[jvolpe]

OK everyone, it's almost lunchtime here and all your great pictures of delicious foods and desserts made me hungry. :(
Janis

[billz]

Janis -

Please grab your camera go to lunch and post a photo! I'm three hours behind you and need inspiration. ;-)

Bill

[NMarti]

Robin
Dinner at 7? Fine - see you then!:D

[CarolLHB]

Robyn-is that an Aussie lobster??? Where are the claws???:eek:

[Robyn]

Carol,
We call them crayfish but their correct term is rock lobster and that's pretty much how they are. See photo below.

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1ILmR9m3cveUtCKzBsuGW8oaC6ZAn (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1ILmR9m3cveUtCKzBsuGW8oaC6ZAn)

Nancy,
Dinner at 7...........I can't wait until then............can't you make it earlier.

Cheers,

[NMarti]

Robin
OMG :eek: That's huge - at least for what we see around here in the midwest. Wow - I could sure feast on that!:D

[CarolLHB]

Robyn, my next question was how big are they, but the photo certainly answered that question!:D Here in New England they have huge and yummy claws...

[Robyn]

Yes.......that is bigger than we would normally expect to get here. All the eating is in the tail - very little elsewhere.

[karen donnybrook]

Robyn, I hope William enjoyed his birthday and I agree with all that chocolate but the crayfish is a beauty. Where did you catch him, was it in a pot or diving?

Mary, IMO the chocolate dog would look better without the gold leaf covering. But having the chocolate fountain as a permanent display, gosh :D

[Robyn]

Karen,

William's birthday photo was taken in December 2004. Sadly we lost him last July. I still have Oliver who will be 9 this Valentine's Day. The "birthday party" for the dogs is still a hangover from when my daughters were children. Generally it's cake and champagne. A little bit of cake for the birthday dog and all the rest for us!
The crayfish was caught by a friend of ours - diving off Cape Barren Island (just off Flinders Island).

[karen donnybrook]

Tony, the red capsicum makes the whole image come alive - well done.

Billz, Well done, I can almost feel the heat coming off the food!

[TonyW]

Karen: Another language difference - I hadn't realised you call them Capsicums. Here they are just called bell or sweet peppers. Go south into Mexico and they call them paprikas. We have a huge greenhouse just up the road where they grow them commercially so we eat a lot!

Tony

[karen donnybrook]

Tony, my Mother used to eat them apples :D I keep forgetting that some of the names and/or expressions are different to other countries.

[NMarti]

Gary & Robin - Where's the beef????:D

[karen donnybrook]

Robin, that is thinking outside the square - well done and Nancy, I am sure the beef is just out of the photo :D

Jelly beans (is that what you call them), Pat and they are so colourful; also like the way you picked out the bright green for the "frame" inside the image.

[bayhli]

Thanks Karen, yes those are jelly beans and the colour is exactly why I went with them. Not much in the way of food stuff in the house today but I found these in the back of the cupboard - the grandchildren must have forgotten about them.

The focus is weird in the photo though - not sure why or what exactly what bothers me about it. I really don't know what the heck I'm doing and need to start reading and experimenting so I can figure this out!

It's so enjoyable to anticipate what everyone will come up with each week and then experience the excellent range of individual creativity and talent. I'm always amazed! Such fun!

Even got a terrific recipe....:)

[TonyW]

Great jelly bean colours but I did notice the focus being off at the top. I'm guessing it's because you used a wide aperture (small f number) and the auto focus is focussing on the centre of the image - so the beans at the top are closer to the camera and with the wide aperture you don't have enough depth of field to get them in focus.

The way round it is to prefocus with the camera pointed at the top of the jar (not sure what camera you have but with mine you press the release half-way down to prefocus) then move the camera and take the picture. That might throw the further beans out of focus in which case you need more depth of field so you'd need to go to a smaller aperture/longer exposure if you have an aperture priority or manual mode.

Tony

[karen donnybrook]

Nancy, it looks as though your dog is willing that container of food closer to him - does he have any supernatural powers :rolleyes:

[NMarti]

He thinks so!:D He stared for nearly 5 minutes just waiting for it to come to him.

[GaryK]

Nancy

The beef was still in the pan. :D

I have never seen a dog carry his/her phone around like that before..very talented.


Pat

How did you get the black background?

[bayhli]

Thanks for the great tips Tony - I'll really appreciate any advice with my photos as I'm trying to really understand it - right now I'm winging it. I try not to use too much photoshop in them for that purpose and will post ones I know could be better technique, not just the ok ones. So please do critique away.

Gary - I used to sell on Ebay quite a bit and have lots of cloth pieces around. So I used a black piece of cloth for the background but then darkened it with levels cause I liked the effect - it also fixed that greyish speckled look that the photo lights give a black background sometimes.

Not doing Ebay very much these days except to buy - I was more interested in doing up the pictures than the actual sale so that's where the photobug hit me and led me to playing with Elements. Paid off in a lot of ways - bought all my camera stuff incl Elements with what I sold on there!

Pat

[GaryK]

Pat

Thanks...I was really toying with a smartie one in a martini glass and calling it a smartini...(it's funny to me ..ok?:D )
But alas no smarties, no martini glass and no decent background. I could have bought the smarties amd used a different kind of glass, but believe it or not, I couldn't even find a clear glass in the house. They were all either tinted or had some design on them.:rolleyes:

[NMarti]

Gary - he's very talented - after all he's "birddog" in disquise. :D Only thing is when he flies - ya gotta watch those "bird droppings". ;)

[bayhli]

I hear you - finding a clear vessel was a real problem for me too.

Actually, a "smartini" sounds pretty darn creative to me, and just your "style" I'm beginning to see. Love it that you can get your humour across in your emails.

You are way too funny Gary .......... guess I'm going to have to give you Negative Points on that! :D :D