I cooked Asparagus a few hours ago. I thought I would take a photo before I sprinkled olive oil, ground pepper and Kosher salt on them and popped them in the oven at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes (I love Asparagus cooked this way–you should try it too).

My hunger caused me to be careless on the focus (I wanted to cook them already so we can eat), but just a few days ago I read something that my father sent me about making compelling photos. I thought that I would give something a try.

When I look at the photo, I feel that I WANT to see the tip of the Asparagus in the middle of the photo. But I can’t because the tips are before the plane of focus. And that makes me… anxious. I’m not sure what other single word would describe it. It makes me feel this tension when I look at it. I know what an asparagus tip looks like, but I still want to see it. It’s like the photo is taunting me.

And it was all by accident. Maybe one day I’ll learn to do this intentionally.

More fun with the mandarin oranges from yesterday.

We bought mandarin oranges today to help with our cold. I was going to take a photo of a bowl of oranges when I realized how mundane it would look.

We still had a banana and some strawberries, so I thought I’d play a little with my food.

We had nothing to eat for today, but I did have chicken in the freezer that I brought down to the fridge to defrost. Inspiration is still running low, and it was already evening, so I just took a picture of the Adobo I was making. I was going to put a Habanero in the coconut milk I was going to add to it. I wish I had a Jalapeño instead, to at least get some color contrast, but I didn’t.

One thing I learned: Freezing the action of boiling food doesn’t look good in a photo. It ends up looking kinda like what you’d see in a swamp. I guess the way I post-processed the colors in the photo didn’t help, but it was the only thing I could do to at least make the photo a little interesting.

I seem to be shooting a lot of subjects that have “Chinese”  in their names.

I went out to have a late lunch of Dimsum with two of my good friends. I knew there was a good chance that the restaurant would have Chinese roast ducks on display in the usual way–on metal hooks behind glass, but the display at the restaurant wasn’t very impressive. Just three ducks, and the glass had greasy streaks. I thought I’d have to shelve the idea for another day yet again.

Then it turned out that my friends were going to the Asian market afterwards. I was out of rice and a few other Asian condiments, so I came along with them.

This is what they had on display at the Asian market.

Went out for lunch at a local Italian restaurant. They serve water with a slice of lemon.

Another late night at work. I noticed that there was an excess of popcorn in the office popcorn machine (we have one like those in movie theaters, except maybe smaller). I thought I’d be a little playful, so I grabbed a clean sheet of paper and made a little boat.

I went to the Asian market today. I was hoping to get a shot of locusts in the freezer section (for shock value) that I saw at one time, but they were gone. It’s either they sold like hotcakes, or nobody was buying them and they lost their shelf space. I’m guessing it’s the latter.

I went to plan B, which involved live crabs and lobsters. I looked at the tub, and saw that I’ll have to make up a plan C. They weren’t alive. They instead had colors that told me they’ve already been cooked. They must have used to be the live ones in the aquariums, and they steamed them before they died of old age or what not. The guy working there, as far as I could tell, didn’t speak English, so I got his attention, showed him my camera, and pointed to the tub. He smiled, nodded his head and watched me. He probably thought I was a little nuts, but I needed my shot.

When I saw the tub, I knew it would be my first attempt at color isolation.

Another late night at work. The only photo I could manage for today was the blueberries I was about to toss in the blender to make a shake.

I think I got a little heavy handed on the colors on the blueberries. They don’t look natural anymore, but after all the work that went into layer masking, I just ran out of energy to redo it. That, and I foolishly deleted my backup layer. Another lesson learned.

Almost ran out of time to take a shot for today. It was close to 12:00 AM and I was still at the office.

I thought, what the heck, I’ll shoot a mug full of popcorn.