Finding Inspiration and Courage

Photo styling by Irina Graewe

Photo styling by Irina Graewe

Photo styling by Irina Graewe

 

Photo styling by Irina Graewe

The absolutely gorgeous photographs above are from the interior stylist Irina Graewe. I've posted my favorites here cause I'm trying to gather enough inspiration and courage to venture myself in the completely new and unknown, to me, realm of photo styling.

I don't have a big amount of amazing "props" and background sets, but I´ll be doing some experimenting soon...

Red Mailboxes

A woman is sitting on a bench at the city square. She   has a cigarette in one hand, an her cell phone in the other. She´s sending a text message. The mail boxes are red, with shame. 

photo by me

My childhood's cake

Another traditional Portuguese recipe with Marie biscuits. And another very rich desert...at least so it says my Danish boyfriend with his highly sensitive palate! Go figure. I chose to make 2 little cakes instead of a big one, but still ended up eating them both. I have to say I didn´t really mind.

This was THE children's birthday parties cake in my family. We all loved it, it´s very, oh so very, easy and quick to make (although it needs 4h in the fridge) and you can shape it as you like. My mother used to make it in a rectangular shape, more or less 6 centimetres high, and then put whatever little toys or candy we preferred on top... everything from the Smurfs to The Gummy Bears (and those were actually gummy bears for our delight). But the masterpiece involved sugar swans in a small pond of green jelly excavated in the cake, a tiny cottage made of waffle biscuits and trees made of lollipops...pure imagination!  

+- 500g of Marie biscuits (Rich tea biscuits), if you get them squared shaped instead of round it´s easier to build the cake

250g butter

200g powdered sugar

2 egg yolks

3 mugs of strong coffee with a bit of sugar

For the cream mix the butter and the sugar until it gets a creamy texture and slightly white. Add the yolks and mix it all for 5 to 7 min. 

Dip the biscuits in the coffee (warm) and set a layer on a plate/tray. Let it cool down and put a layer of cream on top of the biscuits. If the room is too warm, or the biscuits are to warm the cream will melt and make it more difficult to set the layers. Keep adding alternated layers of biscuits and cream until you have the hight and shape you wish. Remember to reserve enough cream to cover the entire cake in the end. Needs to be in the fridge for 4h for the cream to solidify. Some people sprinkle crushed biscuits on top to finish it. 

all photos by me

My "Instas"

I´ve been seeing many posts and a lot of fuss about this INSTAGRAM thing lately. I went and did some research about it and decided to share it here. So, according to Wikipedia, it is an Apple application that, in a very easy and very simple way, allows you to apply filters to your photos, making them look all retro and vintage (quite In at the moment), and then share them in several social networks. But apparently it has become a phenomenon. Like the Polaroid or the Lomo combined with Twitter or Facebook. 

If you feel curious about it and you have an Iphone you can check out this blog with really good tips about how to create your Instagrams. If, like me, the only thing you ever asked from your phone was to make and receive calls and text messages, then you can go the hard way and still get nice results... only with a lot bit more work involved. In any case you can make really, really bad pictures look pretty awesome. And THAT is what got me really interested in this, hmm, trend. 

Let's face it, it's not always handy to carry my camera with me unless I´m going out on purpose on a "photographic expedition". And sometimes if I want to take a picture I want to take it right then. So I had been trying to take pictures with my poor excuse of a phone, cause that one is always with me no matter what. And, of course, the pictures were always very bad. But look at the example below: a crappy picture, cropped into a square (it seems that the magic only works if it is a square), an aging filter, and a black-burnished border.

The following pictures weren´t all taken with my phone, but I had lots of fun watching these results appear. To do this I used Photobucket and you can see some of my other "Instas" there. It may not be as quick to use as an app in your phone, but it´s not difficult at all, it just takes a bit more time. And if you like the results it´s well worth it.

Little squares of photographic deliciousness when they come all together like this.

all photos by me

Egg in Cocotte

Egg in Cocotte is a fun and colourful way to brighten your weekend's breakfast. And it´s one of those recipes where you can choose how many to make and what to use according to what you have available at the moment. You can use left overs you have already prepared or vegetables already cut in your fridge , which makes it a very easy and quick treat to make. It is just wonderfully neat and tidy, perfect to start a relaxed day.

Because this was my first experience, I made 8 different eggs, with small variations of ingredients between them to see what would work better for my palate. But next time it will be just one for me and one for my boyfriend. And to be completely honest I overcooked them. The recipe I followed (well follow is a strong word) said 20 min. at 180.C and maybe, for some specialists in eggs, that would sound like to much right from the start, but like I said, this was my first time attempting anything of the kind.

In essence you want to have:

1 tea spoon of cream or crème fresh in the bottom of the cocotte.

Some finely diced vegetables on top of the cream, asparagus and yellow pepper (previously cooked) work wonders. I also tried some pieces of bacon, it´s good but very rich.

Some sort of herb or seasoning, I used chives, curry and a red pepper "Achar" (Indian sauce, kind of sweet and sour).

Open an egg on top of the previous ingredients.

Season the eggs with salt, black pepper and grazed parmesan.

Pre-heat the oven at 180.C. Put the cocottes in a tray with boiling water up to half their hight. Cook in the oven for something like 10 min (like I said I overcooked mine so I´m cutting on the time here). You want the whites of the eggs to be hard but the yolk should be runny. Have it with croutons or small toasted pieces of bread. 

 And hey, if you feel like being a purist just forget most of the ingredients and simply have a runny egg in a pretty little pot!

all photos by me