Categories
Photo

How to take GORGEOUS food photos using just your iPhone

Today, I’m going to show you just a few simple steps to take great pictures of food, using just your iPhone. Here we go.

Step number one, get a phone.

Hey, babe, can you toss me my phone? What am I supposed to do with this phone? Where is the camera app? Yeah, hello? Can you throw me my modern-day phone, the one that does Twitter? We don’t need this crap today. Today, we’re using just your iPhone.

Step number two is lighting.

All right, so the most important thing in all of photography is lighting. We all know that what makes a good photo is how it’s lit. Find a nice big window in your home. If you don’t have a big window, that’s fine. Just get yourself close to a window, one preferably with soft, even, cool light. Morning hours are great, but if you live in an apartment like us, when it’s just direct sunlight in the morning, blasting through our windows, that’s not good. Direct sunlight, what that does is it creates a lot of shadows and it creates a lot of blown-out highlights in your photos, and it’s very, very difficult to get those back. So, what you want to do is look for a window that has really cool, soft, even light.

Step number three, simple backgrounds.

You don’t want to have something too distracting. You want simple and clean. I like a white style, that’s just my preference, but a lot of people do really well with dark and moody photography, or bright and vibrant. Start with something white, like a marble surface or a white tile or something like that. So, what the white does for me is, it really helps to differentiate the food from the surface so the viewer’s eyes go straight to the colorful, most beautiful part of the photo and that should be your food. That’s why I like using neutral backgrounds. That’s why I like using neutral surfaces. That way, it’s never distracting. You get the point across very quickly and the viewer’s eyes go directly to the food and that’s ultimately what you want them to be at.

Step number four is angles.

The three main angles that people photograph food from are typically overhead, which are sometimes referred to as flat lay, 45-degree angle, and then also, straight on with smartphone stabilizer. Food that wouldn’t look good from above is often photographed from a 45 or straight on like burgers, pancakes, drinks. So, it really just depends on your style, what you want to achieve. So, if you are shooting waffles, I recommend doing something from overhead. Waffles have all those little nooks and crannies in there and you definitely want to capture that detail. I would say shoot something like overhead or a 45 for waffles.

Step number five

Setting up your iPhone to do semi-manual control. And what I mean by this is, is you can leave your phone pretty much the entire thing in automatic if you want, but just make sure you tap your subject to get focus and then lower your exposure down just a tiny bit. That’s all I mean by semi-manual control. And what that does is, you preserve some of those highlights and you preserve some of those shadows because it’s very easy to bring those back up in post, whereas you can’t go the opposite way. Once you blow out highlights, blow out shadows, blow out the entire image, you can’t regain that information.

Step number six

You never want to digitally zoom into your image. And what I mean by that is this button right here, this toggle on-off, goes 1X to 2X. And what that does is, it digitally zooms into your image, so you lose all that data from the outside of your image that you would normally get in its resting original state. So, if you actually want to zoom into an image, just move your body, your arms forward, and just get a little bit closer to your subject. Your iPhone is not going to have any trouble whatsoever focusing in on something a little bit closer, and it’s just going to be juicy and filled with all this goodness. We fill up the entire screen with the food that you’re trying to capture and it’s going to look outstanding.

Step number seven

Use a bounce board. Go down to Target or Walmart right now and grab yourself a dollar or two foam core board, and just set that up opposite of your light source. So, in this case, your window light, and that light’s going to travel across your food and then bounce off and return back in, filling in a lot of those shadows, preserving some of those highlights, and just illuminating your scene just a little bit more.

Bonus tip

If your phone has a portrait mode or something that creates artificial depth, use it, and play around with it. It can be really cool for telling a unique story to get that really nice blurred background effect and to really isolate your image and bring out the characteristics of the food that you’re trying to shoot. Thanks to Alex Norman for consulting this.

The last thing I want to say is just practice, practice, practice. That’s how you get good at something. That’s how you get good at food photography. Work with different angles and different lighting scenarios and really figure out what you like. This is probably the most important step in anything that I’ve talked about today is just experimenting and practicing, and that’s how I got where I’m at today, just three years of totally just guessing and just figuring it out as I go.

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Uncategorized

BEST WATER STAIN REMOVER EVER

And it’s a whink rust stain remover. We have hard water because we have a well. Obviously we live in the sticks, so we don’t have town water. But we have a water softener, but you still get these stains. This is years and years of stains, if you see on here. But I just tried this stuff, and you’ve got to check this out.

So look at our old tub that’s kind of like… It has some streaks because I already put some of this on it, but this was all basically this color. So check this out, how good this is. So all you got to do is spray a little, spray some on like that. And actually a lot of it will just start dissipating right when you put it on. And then you just take this and you just scrub it off as you put it on. It’s absolutely amazing.

And if you look over on the top here, I already did that part in it. That was all orange or the rusting. And so let’s try this. I’ll show you this real quick. On this is the worst part, right here, so we’ll put some of this on. It evaporates as you go. It’s amazing. But you don’t even have to scrub a lot of it if you… Look at that. It automatically takes it down with it. It’s absolutely amazing. And these are some hard, hard water stains. So if you have some little spots that you didn’t hit, you just come over with a scrubbing sponge. You can come over the top like that and get the areas that you missed.

It’s absolutely, I’m saying absolutely a lot, but it is great product. I can’t believe how good. We were just scrubbing this today with some lime remover, basic stuff, and we were getting nowhere with it. So if you’re looking for some good rust stain remover, grab this. Phenomenal. We’ll do a quick video when we’re done to show you how it looks.

Okay. This is how clean our shower looks. Now, this is the cleanest I’ve ever seen it. Usually, it’s pure orange with rust stains and we would spend hours scrubbing it, scraping it, using different cleaners. We could never get it to look like this. So, we’ve found this new cleaner that he showed earlier and it’s amazing. So good.

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Uncategorized

Is the Most Expensive Home Ice Cream Maker Actually the Best?

Hello everyone. We’re taking a break from just normal wackadoo. You can do this programming where it’s maximum work for a minimal improvement and we’re going to test some products. The first one we have here is one with an internal compressor, which means it has built in refrigeration. The second one uses ice from your freezer and the third one uses proof frozen buckets. This one having the the internal compressor, you just pour the product in, turn it on. This is probably the easiest way to make ice cream and it also has a pre-cool situation where you can turn it on and the single beach, the compressor will be chilling for upwards of 20 minutes.

So when you put the product in, it’s already started. It’s already nice and cold. If you were to proofread this like it allows you to but we’re not going to cause this unfair, uh, you will get probably smaller ice crystals. Is that better? Mouthfeel yes. Great. Smaller. The better. And the next step we have the nostalgia ice cream maker, which uses the ice and this comes in around 39 99 which this one is obviously based on salt and ice. This one’s probably going to be a slower process. I’m going to be impressed if this comes up. Awesome. The last one here is the Cuisinart, uh, ice cream maker. This rings in around $53 $54 and this uses the freezer bowl, put the ice cream in it. This thing agitates it. The colds on the outside, as long as you mix it up, Colby comes on the inside.

You’re not going to purchase this and go home and make ice cream. The barrel needs to get frozen for upwards of a day and a half, two days. I’m still kind of excited about this one concern. You can get 10 of these for the price of this one. Yeah. This one you can break consistent consistently over and over like this today and you can have a new one at your door prime in two days or less. You should get on a subscription and then there’s also the question of how much ice cream do you really going to make? Are you going to have one party and then realize, Oh, I don’t like making ice cream and I got stuck with one of dollars or this thing goes underneath the counter and if you ever need it again, it’s there and that’s a big consideration to take is like when you’re at these price points, how often are you going to make ice cream one, this guy, and especially this guy, take up a ton of space in your kitchen.

You can have all the things you can use this bucket for. Let’s get started. You brought some ice cream base with you. We’re going to portion this out and then we’re probably going to do what for each? Well, let’s put a coordinate. Everyone’s using the same base, the basis of the temperature, same temperature in each one. We’re going to start each one at the same time and analyze it as we go through the steps. We need to probably ice and salt this first with the bull in it, right? Yep. So the bowl is in our freezer right here. Put this in here and get a rest on a sofa or a recliner. We put this guy on top. We’ll obviously maybe to set it. Why don’t we don’t we put the quarter of ice cream in this first. Okay. See, this is all new new for us too. It’s been good for us too. So we have the bag of ice and we need salt. The salt can allow for it to freeze colder than it normally would as water.

So let’s do, uh, a layer of salt. Now talk to me about these paddles. This paddle is going to be rigid inside this and it’s going to spin the a, it’s going to spin the barrel, the, uh, the aluminum canister, which is essentially going to make the friction on the side and make it cold as her movement is moving from the coal, from the outside of the agitation. Come on, Macy. You get it together, I guess. I guess I should have done this. Oh, there we go. Okay. I made it, made it a little more difficult than this supposed to be. And last but not least, you want to get our, um, yes, I’ll get the balls. It’s supposed to have no movement of liquid and if you listen, it should be frozen in this. This was in there for about 24 hours. Um, so really probably about 36 hours even though the recommendation is 16 to 24 but what we want to do, everything kind of according to factory directions and so we’re taking it at the 24. All right, let’s let the freezing begin.

This one now, the canister Ella canister is actually spinning in the ISIS stationery, which is what we’ve been waiting on. Yeah. That just comes from the ice finding that we had a packed and kind of tight. So now everything’s where it needs to be and this is freezing probably better than either of the other two. So out the gate nostalgia that you can break is coming out the Gates shop. Yeah, we can get this down around 15 degrees. Off this, this ice bath, pretty impressive. Over here we have 48 degrees over here. Let’s test it against this guy. It’s dropping 44 42 39 and what we have happening in here is really nothing. These are both consistently being frozen, whereas this one is dying out. Oh gosh. Is not getting any colder. In fact, it’s getting less cold. This one might be a great addition to a milkshake 38.2 what is that feature? The we we served in UA.

There’s, that’s why you spend, that’s why you spend the $400 music right now. We’re sitting around 10 minutes in and we already have ice cream being made here. I can see the freezing, the product is frozen and I can see how can you see where the agitation is happening on the wall right there? Yeah, that’s, that’s a disgust. See, that’s a lot thicker than anyone do. I dare say that. Your initial hypotheses is now shifting duper shot behind the nostalgia. In hindsight, this is more like a professional machine. Obviously it’s done in a real rudimentary fashion, but in it, as far as con concept, this is the most efficient out of these three

We’re at 23 minutes right now. Distinct ribbons off of this ice cream base are coming up. It’s no longer a liquid. It’s actually, looks like it’s folding into itself. Yeah, we’re, we’re, we’re about five, six minutes away from this being ready to go. So we’re actually at 38.1 right now. The temperature from about 10 minutes ago has gone up about a degree. Um, and since there is no intuitive internal cooling mechanism in here, it’s not going to get a much better. The one that freezes faster is the one that’s going to be better. Just because the ice crystals are going to be smaller. They’re given less time to develop a little engine that could, is running away right now. The Breville with the presale would be done by now, probably would be done. We have some sad news to report and flat lining over here. We’ve gone up three degrees. You know we’re not, we’re not in a happy ice cream place. I think the wise thing to do at this point really is make it a two horse race. You pulling the plug? We’re going to pull the plug, right? I mean it’s just sad. Now right off the table

It’s been 40 minutes. Let’s take a look and get a real reference point of what this is. We can see this one and we’re in this one off. Oh yeah, it’s got an on off switch. The ice cream is moving still. It’s not really ice cream. It’s soft serve, soft set, so it’s not like a hard scoop ice cream. You, no matter what ice cream we make, you’re going to want to harden it in the freezer. And I think we’re ready here.

Let’s get this in the freezer now. It’s a waiting game. What are we looking for textually? We want something that’s creamy and smooth. The smaller the ice crystals, the less you’re going to feel, but I think the better the product is. Okay, so we really only have two to compare. Now they’re both going to be on the S on the soft side because they haven’t been in the freezer very long. But I think we’ll be able to tell what the texture is and who wins the overall ice cream challenge for the day. Great. Show a. We should try the Breville for sure. We should,

I think it’s smoother. I think that’s, I think that’s once that’s hardened, but I think it’s going to be a really nice, really nice consistent, yeah. Yeah. Let’s see how the uh, Oh wow. I find it to be even smoother. That’s actually a noticeable difference. Yeah. It’s like extremely creamy. The, even the tiniest bit of grain that you got on there almost seems like it’s disappeared on this one disappeared in this one. Yeah. This is, uh, this, this one. Huh? You Sam as an ice cream professional. If you were to say out of one to three, maybe just one. Two. Yeah. I think three is pretty much fending for itself. I, I this, this one, this is the winner today. This is a, this is a close, close, close second. Uh, but if you weigh the price point into it, it’s a little further away. Yeah.

But as far as product, this is across the board. This one. Yeah. Eating your words right now will love you a little bit. I, you know, I don’t, I’m too old because to get up little stuff like that. Okay. So for those folks at home, you’re a nostalgia ice cream maker is going to give you not only texture, but a very low cost item to get that beautiful ice cream. Thanks brother for coming in. Um, if you don’t want to run through all this hassle, just hit up SAB at Oddfellows. Uh, here. We’ll take care of you with delicious flavors of all kinds. If you want to see more videos like this, maybe we break some more stuff. Click here. Why can I not do this at home? Like why? Why is this not a thing? I don’t want to cut a hole in my dining room table and make a trough.

Categories
Cooking

How to make Lefse Original Recipe

Today we’re going to show you how to make everyone’s favorite Scandinavian treat, which is lefse, yes, and we’re going to use an old family recipe. You might have your own favorite recipe or you could even use a left, some mix. That’ll work. Great. Okay, then let’s get started. First we’re going to talk about the ingredients you need for LASA, good russet potatoes, and then of course in any Scandinavian recipe you’re going to want real cream and real butter. And then you need flour, sugar, and a pinch of salt and a pinch of Norwegian love roughly. You get to be flustered. Now let’s talk about the equipment we’re going to need. You need really good equipment for making lefts. The tools we need include a potato ricer, a pastry board and pastry cloth, a corrugated rolling pin and cover and left. So turning sticks and don’t forget the grill. As I said before, we’re going to be using russets to make our left side today because russets are high in starch and low in moisture and that gives us the nice Tinder quality. We like to have today, I’m going to date about four pounds of potatoes for this recipe. For those of you keeping score, that’s about 10 to 12 medium sized spuds and you try to cut them about the same size so that they get done cooking at the same time and that makes it a lot easier to rice them.

After about 15 minutes

You’ll need to check them for doneness and they should be about fork Tinder. But don’t let them cook too long cause you don’t want them to get mushy. Now these look about right, so I think it’s time to drain them.

Nope, it’s a good idea to let the potato sit for a few minutes to let off the excess moisture. Excess moisture is the death of good left, so don’t you know that’s for sure. Now it’s time to begin ricing your potatoes. It’s very important to have a good quality ricer because ricing makes the potatoes so much smoother than mashing and it doesn’t shred them to smithereens, like a food processor cam. Also, I’d like to recommend our side project that will help to keep your house up to date with colors and paintings to yours choise. That’s now you just fill your rice, you’re about two thirds fall and then you rise your potatoes into a large mixing bowl. Aunt Lena riced her potatoes twice for Lexa as smooth as butter. And Lena was an overachiever for sure.

Mixing Up Sadow

Now we’re ready to start mixing up our left Sadow. So I have got eight cups of warm riced potatoes and to that I’m going to add half a cup of butter and half a cup of cream. You have to have real butter and real cream for Scandinavian treats. And now to that we add a tablespoon of sugar and a tablespoon of salt. This is going to be good. And then you mix it all together really well. And that I like to always leave it to stand on the counter for a while to cool down before I put it in the fridge to chill.

So now it’s time to roll the dope. Oh no, no. First you have to get your equipment ready. You can’t make good left side without good equipment. So you start with a left sub-board that’s covered with a pastry cloth. And this is really important. We have to take a lot of flour and spread it all out to the edges of the whole pastry clock because if we don’t and we start rolling that left Sodo on here, it’s going to skip and break up and be a terrible mess. You bet we can’t have that. So we got a good flowered pastry cloth here and you need a good corrugated rolling pin that you cover with a left sackcloth. And now that our dough is thoroughly chilled, we’re going to go ahead and add two and a half cups of flour and Raleigh. Why don’t you go ahead and give this a good working over.

Doing The Rest

Now that our dough is sapped, we’re ready to start making left. Sir, we’ve taken out as much dough as we will use right away and the rest of it is still chilling in the fridge and now I’m going to have a cup of coffee while rallied. Works his magic. Great. Let’s get rolling. I’d like to start with a glob of bill about the size of a small tennis ball, the path the door into the shape of a hockey puck. Then you get your roll in pin. Put some flour on there so it doesn’t stick, and then you start to roll the Dole out into nice circle. You’ve done this a few before having to Raleigh. Let’s just say I know my way around pastry board. Now you want the Dole pretty Finn. In fact, you should actually be able to see the lettering on your pastry board through the dough. When you get ready to move it over to the grill and the grill is good and hot because we’d preheated it to 500 degrees. Great.

Now you take your left cystic and push it right on through the middle, under the Dole. Then you’ll take it over to the grill, lay one side down on the grill, and then roll your stick over and lay the other side right down the crown.

Okay, and about a minute for that lesson. Should be ready to flip. And you’ll know when you see bubbles start to rise on the top, it flip it and let it cook for about another 45 seconds or until the Brown spots look just the way you like them.