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The Royal Flop Cake
Whenever I am doing a photoshoot, I always start with a vision. I don’t mean to sound like some kind of patronizing artist, dramatically fluttering my eyelashes and looking at the ceiling as if I have some grand idea that no one else does. No. I just like to daydream. And then I like to make my daydreams happen. I make them happen with the magic of props (usually things found around my house) and my camera. I’m pretty good at this part and I go to great lengths to make my vision happen. Sometimes I go too far and it kicks me in the butt.
Like my latest tea party shoot for Victoria Day for Alphamom. You guys probably think I bang out crafts in an afternoon but the reality is that it takes me several days. One day of planning, one day of shopping/gathering and usually graphic designing and one day of shooting. This is actually an aggressive schedule and I’m always happy when it works out. When it doesn’t work out I lose money. Bad. Like working for less than a dollar an hour bad.
So it’s in my best interest for thing to work out.
This week I had a vision of tiny pink cakes for Queen Victoria’s Royal Birthday Tea Party. I love pink cakes and I love things that are tiny so put them together and I’m squeeing all over the place. I figured I could just make the cakes. I love to decorate cakes and I can throw a mix together usually. I figured I could do it. How hard could it be?
I bought two vanilla cake mixes from Trader Joe’s and went to town. I figured I’d want the cakes pretty thin so I only filled my cake tins with an inch of batter. Then because I’m smarter than a house cat I baked them for half the time. Half the batter, half the time, right? Hah! Baking is a science and nothing is easily halved like that. My cakes burned and they were not even. I also have an electric oven that is possessed by poltergeists so things didn’t turn out so well.
Aaaaaand maybe I should mention that I cannot follow directions. I mixed all my ingredients and then wondered why my mix was so mealy. Then I noticed that I had not added the two cups of milk that my recipe required. So I added them in later.
Hmmmm! Yeah.
That meant my batter didn’t mix completely properly. The milk sloshed over the sides of my mixing bowl and the bottom of the mixture was thick glunk. Did I make sure that I mixed it thoroughly? Of course not! I like to wing things and baking is tedious. I don’t have time for such carefulness. I poured my batter in my pans and sort of pushed it around with a spatula.
Let’s take an inventory of problems:
1. uneven cake
2. burned edges
3. cake is very spongey
But I was not dissuaded. I got my little round cookie cutters that I bought especially for this project and cut my little cakes. I evened them up the best I could with a serrated knife. They sort of looked cute. I thought at this point that icing would cover a multitude of sins. That’s one good thing about photoshoots. It doesn’t have to taste good. I just has to look good.
Hahahahaha!
Jokes on me.
I wanted the icing to be smooth. Like a glaze or what you would see on cake pops and petit fours. You know: cute little tea things, all smooth and dainty with maybe some iced flowers or some white polka dots. I even bought a new icing bag, new couplers and a new tiny icing tip for the job. I was so excited for the decorating part.
The first go around, I made my glaze too watery. I poured it onto my spongey cake like lemonade, soaking it like a strawberry shortcake in milk. It was very very sad. I thought I took a picture of that mess but I guess that one only made it into my snapchat story. Then I thickened my icing up and stuck my cakes in the freezer for an hour, thinking that harder cake would keep the frosting on the outside and not soaking in so much.
You know what happened? As the cake defrosted my icing kept sliding off of it. It was avalanche city on my cakes. Tiny little skiers were fleeing for their lives. I tried to smooth the icing around with a knife but that turned into a crumbly mess. I know I could do a crumb coat or something. I’ve watched enough cake baking reality shows to know about that but these cakes were so little, it was like trying to ice a mud ball that was crumbling in my hand. Maybe there’s a reason there are no tiny pink cakes on the internet that perfectly match my vision. Maybe it just cannot be done!
And that is how my tea party came to be catered by the local grocery store! Some visions die hard, in the car with tears and a plastic take-out container from the bakery.
Here are a few outtakes. My models say it tasted good. So there’s that at least. Too bad I don’t care about that.
Stay tuned for the alphamom post. In spite of my catastrophe in baking, the shoot turned out pretty well! Phew.
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Wedding photography is not for the faint of heart.
I shot a wedding a few weekends ago and I’m still reeling from the pressure of it all. Not because the bride was a bridezilla or anything. She wasn’t. She was so over-the-top nice and the wedding was the most beautifully, well-planned event ever. I was nervous because I’d never shot a wedding before. I’m NOT a professional photographer. I just take a lot of pictures and sometimes, now and then, I get paid for it. But really I’m more of a creative director and I have a vision for photography that I try and complete with this terribly awkward piece of equipment (called a camera) that does not always do my bidding. Seriously, cameras are tricky! They are not my friend! Throw some low lighting and a flash in the mix and I will start chewing my cuticles off. It is just nerve-racking. Shudder.
But if you shoot enough pictures, sometimes some of them turn out. And if you have some photoshop skills, sometimes you can bring the not-so-turned out ones back from the dead. I do this a lot. In fact, for this shoot I shot raw (which I never do and required several humbling lessons from my ex) and it really saved my backside from ruin. I never realized that you can bring a picture back from being over or under-exposed by TWO whole stops when you shoot raw. TWO STOPS! This is very awesome when there is a white wedding dress with all it’s detail and shadows lost to the twilight zone of flash photography. Those of you who do shoot photography are probably laughing at me right now, everybody else is probably confused (sorry!). Maybe all wedding photographers are nervous wrecks like me and they just hide it well. I don’t know. Maybe I just need more experience. But don’t sign me up for a wedding too quick. I’m still recovering. I think I have PTSD.
It was really fun though. In a highly nervous, constantly-on-my-toes, for-six-hours-straight kind of way. I know the family so it was really sweet to be there up-close and personal on such a special day. I loved that part. I loved being in the dressing room and seeing the intimacy of family and friends. I loved capturing the moments…the hugging, the crying, even the raw emotional bursts of nerves. I’ve always loved being a photo journalist and telling the story with different shots. Details, emotions, establishing shots…the story of it all. I love that part so much that it almost makes me consider doing this again.
There were so many beautiful details to capture and try and to portray in a way that would show the viewer what it was really like to be there in the moment. It’s a job though. My brain was working on over-drive, thinking of shots and then trying to make the subjects feel comfortable while you flash them incessantly like an annoying mosquito-esque paparazzi. It’s hard! I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve. I know how to make people bend where they should bend and laugh when they should laugh but it can get tiring when you run out of jokes and small talk. There were many times where I just wanted to go hide in a closet and let everyone be for a minute or 60. Thankfully, I was paid to be there and the bride had a golden smile going at full wattage that set the mood for everyone (especially me).
They did this really cool “first look” shoot so we could get photos before the wedding and capture the groom’s expression when he saw his bride for the first time. You know, usually that happens during the ceremony but then you’re stuck taking photos after the ceremony and before the reception and that keeps the guests waiting for hours for their dinner. So this was before the ceremony but you still get the fun of the first look. It was SO fun. And even more fun was the wedding party all crammed in this little house looking out the window with their phones trying to get pictures of the moment too. You can see how fun and mischievous the bride is. She cracked me up. And of course her groom is so in love with her. It was adorable.
But you know what is not adorable? Cameras that don’t do what you want them to. This wedding was an evening wedding and I have little to no experience with flash photography. I’m more of a set-the-camera-on-auto-and-pray-that-it-works sort of photographer. And it didn’t work all the time. There were all kinds of problems. Wrong film speed. Some pictures were completely blown-out. Some were just blurs….like painting with light when you’re drunk. It was horrible. I had to make two desperate phone calls to Toby and I’m so glad that he had pity on me and didn’t pull any “I’m your ex now. You don’t need my help” attitude because I was humble and near tears. But I couldn’t give up. I just shot and shot and shot and shot. And in the end some of the blurs turned out really cool. Even though they are all kinds of wrong and unprofessional, I feel like they captured the mood even better than the correctly shot photos. Funny how that works.
I also had an assistant who totally saved the day with her back-up shots. I’m not including any of her photos in this post because I am proud and I don’t want to play off that her work is mine but she easily contributed a good quarter of my photos in the final package that I gave the bride. I’m so glad I hired her. And even more humbled because so many of her shots were better than mine.
But I did it. I’m glad I did. What an incredible learning experience! I’m not too keen to do it again but I can say that I know a TON more about photography than I did when I started. A ton learned by trial and FIRE and sweat and tears and gritting of teeth
And also fun and dancing and cake. So it’s not all bad. No, I didn’t dance but everyone else did! They sure can dance too. Everyone from the littlest toddler to the oldest grandpa was out there on the dance floor shaking a leg. It put all the weddings I’ve been to before to shame. It was a dance-a-thon. I think the bride might have been a dancer or something because people could shake it. And everyone had heels on too! Super spiky high heels that would make me trip just looking at them! It was high entertainment.
All I gotta say is: now that I’ve heard from the bride that she loves the photos and nobody’s noticing all my technical errors, I’m feeling pretty good about this event. I might do it again IF it’s a daytime wedding and the bride is super DUPER nice like this girl was.
Thank you Kendall! It was a beautiful wedding and you are beautiful. I am honored to have had the chance to shoot it. Thanks for having faith in me.
