I am not much of a breakfast person.
Actually, that's not entirely true. I love breakfast. I love the foods of breakfast; omelets to pastries, I love it all equally.
Unfortunately, I also love sleep, and indulging in the one usually leaves little or no time for the other, so on most days my breakfast looks something like this:
Delicious. The secret is to sweeten the milk before steaming and frothing. Trust me.
But the assignment for this week was "breakfast" and not "unhealthy habits" so I decided to take a few different approaches to the subject.
Cereal is a huge part of breakfast in my house. Both of the girls choose Cheerios as their first meal a few times a week, and like most one year olds, The Boy has them all the time. They are a useful finger food to help him improve his manual dexterity, and as a bonus, they keep him entertained for minutes at a time while his Mommy tries to do crazy things like load the dishwasher.
In short, Cheerios make us happy.
This is the photo as I took it. Again, I think I framed it poorly. Not only did I put the smile in the middle of the shot, but (as my cousin pointed out) I also clipped the top of the spoon.
The first problem is fixable with a little cropping, but there's nothing I can do about the second.
I also think that the lighting and exposure are not flattering. Not only does my cute bowl look dirty, but the milk looks like it has been sitting there for a week.
I wanted the photo to look cheerful. I am not looking for subtlety since I associate Cheerios with my children and subtlety is pretty much lost on them completely.
I played around with the photo and ended up trying to focus on making the photo look "happy", if that makes sense.
I ended up just trying to brighten everything - the milk, the spoon, the flowers on the bowl - in an effort to brighten the photo and overcome my poor lighting.
I think the final photo is playful and fun, but I can't stop looking for the top of that darned spoon
Moving on, I took one other approach to the "cereal" idea when I was grocery shopping yesterday.
I originally wanted to get a shot of the entire aisle, but all the various ads and doodads that they hang from the shelves make it impossibly cluttered. Instead, I chose the Special K box since it is the simplest.
Maybe it's just me, but I like that the K is almost running toward you in the photo instead of running away like it would be I had taken it in the other direction.
All I actually did to edit the picture was straigten it out since the edge of the first box of cereal seems crooked to me, and then I increased the saturation and sharpened the lines a bit.
Meh. It's okay. I think that the idea in my head was better than the execution.
Also, I really do have to get a tripod.
Do you have a white-balance setting on your camera? When shooting in your house, next time try the setting for 'incandescent' photos. The bulbs add a yellow tone to almost everything, so the white balance might help counter the problem of the lighting. I really like the smile being on the bottom and left 'third' rule better. Plus the spoon gives you a directional line pointing you toward the smile. I really like the photo!!
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