It rained this weekend; a nice surprise any time of year, particularly so in late autumn.
Rain nixed yard sales, which were at a low ebb already thanks to the holiday timeframe. So we hit the road with cameras in hand.
Unfortunately, I committed a cardinal photography sin on Saturday. I didn’t check my camera battery before leaving home, and we didn’t bring a spare. I grabbed a few passable snaps before the battery ran out, took a few more with my phone camera, but overall the combination of limited shots, and misty, beautiful skies turning into a downpour… Ugh. None of my shots were what I was hoping for. A few were passable and I got a couple I’d call good. Not great, but good.
The desert plants and animals are happy, though.
The photo up at the top of the page was thrown together in a hurry tonight. It was originally slated for a project. It most likely won’t get used for the project, which is holiday-centric. I don’t know what I own in the Thanksgiving vein, but I’ll give it a shot when it’s not o’dark thirty on a Sunday night.
Still lifes are not my photographic forte. Neither are low-light shots. I was aiming for warm ambience and soft light, though, and I’m gonna say mission accomplished. For Dangerspouse, if you’re still around (I know you said you might not be); my light source was a $5 pole lamp from a garage sale, with a single LED “warm” bulb. The lens is the same 70-300 I use for landscape photography. (At least now I have the sense to turn the aperture to 4.5 instead of 13.) I turned flash off because I KNEW a flash would do me in. It’s not a technically perfect photo, by a long shot.
Still better than it would’ve been a year ago, or even six months ago.
Scrounge-o-ween
Things were were getting down to the nubs in the grocery department last week. Our freezer had gone from jam-packed to, “I think I could fit a side of beef in there, with room to spare”. It was looking nekkid. The fridge itself was the emptiest it’s been since we moved in, other than when we had to empty it due to the power outage. The pantry wasn’t empty, though it was considerably slimmed down.
Don’t you dare feel sorry for anybody at my house. What passes for down to the nubs at our house, I know plenty of people would consider good eats.
Dinner Thursday was extra-thick-cut boneless pork chops, buttered sweet potatoes, and green beans. The pork chops were browned together with whole mushrooms. I added enough water to braise them so they’d cook through. (These were THICK chops — probably 2″ thick.) Toward the end of cooking I threw in a half-can of French-fried onions I found in the back of the pantry. And if you’re thinking, That doesn’t sound so bad, you’d be absolutely right. It turned out to be one of my all-time favorite meals. G was too busy stuffing his face to agree or disagree with me.
Cheapskate-who-eats-well-tip: NEVER buy pork chops. Buy a boneless pork loin roast and cut into a combination of chops and/or diced and/or chunks, and freeze. It costs much less and is usually better quality than the pre-packaged chops. I paid $1.94 per pound for a boneless pork roast Friday, which is average around here. The cheapest cut of prepack bone-in pork chops was $4 a pound.
The only other ingredient added to the chops was a dash of Nature’s Seasons. A simple salt & pepper rub would work. Throw in a little paprika if you’re so inclined. Or trade for lemon pepper. Anything meat/poultry/fish is kind of a no-brainer: just use whatever savory seasoning combination you prefer. (I don’t generally care for sweet glazes on a main dish, but you do you.)
The sweet potatoes were cubed, nuked, add salt & pepper and butter. I don’t pollute perfectly good sweet potatoes/yams with added sugar, marshmallows, all that stuff. The basic tubers are nutritional powerhouses. Why screw it up by mixing in junk food?
The green beans were canned French-style green beans, dumped out of the can and simmered while the rest cooked. It was use-what-we-had week for the past three weeks, and we had canned green beans. Their simplicity was right for the meal, anyway.
I was planning to make Poor Man’s Sherbet (a frozen concoction involving canned milk and Kool Aid), but got lazy and let it slide.
Friday was payday. Most I’ve spent on a single bill of groceries in forever. The fridge and cupboard are stocked to well within comfort levels again.
I’ll keep this short. Have a wonderful, peaceful Thanksgiving.
I’m glad your food supply is back at “crammed full of good stuff”. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Thanks, Terrif. I hope your Thanksgiving is wonderful, too!
Ah yes, the joys of battery operated goodies when batteries don’t operate. Happens to all of us, and it sucks when it does.
Hey, I really like your still life! As usual, your sense of composition is beyond reproach. It is very hard lighting but that’s not always a bad thing, and this shot is an example of how it can work by creating mood. Still, there’s a very easy way to soften the light in that setup you described. Just shoot through a scrim. Anything will do, as long as it’s translucent and won’t melt if it accidentally gets too close to the bulb. I made a small scrim a while back by stapling a square of cooking parchemnt paper to an empty picture frame. For larger shots I’ve draped a shower curtain over a rod. Anything the light can pass through will make for more diffuse light, and more gradual fade into shadow (“soft light”).
Good on you for getting the aperature beast under control! Definite improvement, there. There’s an awful lot of noise in the picture – again not always a bad thing, if that’s what you’re aiming for. Gritty and all that, you know. But do you know what your ISO was there? Really, just curious.
Great job. Again! (The same goes for the foodstuffs 😉 )
Thank you!
I wanted hard light. I would’ve preferred even harder, but worked with what I had. This was literally a spur-of-the-moment shot.
The camera was on aperture priority, with ISO defaulted to 6400 (tbh I’m surprised it didn’t default higher). Grittiness/noise was intentional. I could’ve cleaned it up but chose not to. My intent was the sense of a vintage photo — also why I left the warmer light tones. There’s very little post-processing other than resizing and cropping to eliminate something far right.