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My first personal blog. And we made some bread and pizza! yum yum!

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action. Mother Teresa

This will be my first official personal blog post and I must say I am very excited while writing this. I have been doing photography for close to 10 years, and I have done many personal projects before, but I havent shared much of it and I have been reluctant to do personal projects ever since doing wedding photography full-time. I have been busy. But I have realised that I need to make time for personal projects, because if I do not put myself in the work that I do, then I will lose interest in photography.

I love FOOD, TRAVEL and PEOPLE (and their stories), and I have found that weddings have elements of those themes but not a focus of those themes...and weddings pay well and the other themes...not so much. Honestly it does. So I have been focussing on weddings because I really enjoy weddings, but it was those underlying elements that has been pushing me to do what I do. The street photography from traveling the globe, the people that I meet and whom I get to capture while traveling...and the stories I get to tell from the streets...that is what has fueled my passion for wedding photography. I am also a passionate follower of Jesus, so weddings are very important to me, because weddings were important to Him. I love the food from weddings, and with some weddings we get to eat super fancy meals. And obviously weddings are about people, so I get to photograph people...which I love doing. 

Here's my bucket list:

- I have always wanted to work for National Geographic as a photographer (not sure if I want that lifestyle, but I have envied those photographers for many years for the work they do, but they seldom share the effort they go through in achieving some of those amazing photographs) 

- I want to do commercial Food Photography one day, and also photography for Lodges and Hotels, which will allow me to travel more.

So enough about me for now.

Here is my first attempt at Food Photography. Today I went to buy some groceries at the store, and I walked past the bread bakery area and when I saw the bread dough I thought my son would enjoy to make food together with my wife Juanita. And he did.

We ended up making bread rolls and a pizza, and my son played with the left-over dough, rolling it and slamming it with his fists. What fun!

Recipe for the bread rolls:

We used ready-made bread dough from the grocer. Roll out 50g balls and put it in a pan. Season the bread rolls with a dash of salt. Oven bake at 200C for 10-12 min.

Simple setup. I held my Nikon 750D with Sigma 35mm f1.4 ART in my hand, with my Nikon SB-910 flash firing using Phottix Strato II trigger and receiver set. 1/200s f2.2

Simple setup. I held my Nikon 750D with Sigma 35mm f1.4 ART in my hand, with my Nikon SB-910 flash firing using Phottix Strato II trigger and receiver set. 1/200s f2.2

Recipe for home-made pizza:

Ready-made bread dough: 100g (I used some of the bread dough my son played with)

Raw flour: 50g

Tomato paste: 5g packet

Large Black Mushrooms

Ina Paarman's Garlic and Herb spices

Cheddar cheese: 50g

How to?

Preheat the oven to 220C. 

Pour some flour on the kitchen top on the kitchen top to prevent the dough to stick to your hands and to the rolling pin. 

Prepare the pizza base by taking the ready-made dough, knead it a bit with your hands and eventually rolling it as thin as possible on the kitchen top. 

Then, take the tomato paste and spread it evenly with a spoon on the base until all of the base has been covered. 

Put the large mushrooms on the base and spice the pizza with some of Ina Paarman's spices and cover with cheese. 

Put in the oven at 220C for 10-15min until the base has firmed up, and the mushroom and the base has been cooked.

Cut into bite pieces and enjoy!

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