I love photographs of food!  The more colorful and animated the better. When I was just a tiny tot I would sit in my Mom’s kitchen looking at all of the photographs in her cookbooks even before I could read the recipes.  I still choose books not by the cover so much as the number of photos inside. So when I had the opportunity to have a professional photographer photograph me and my culinary creations I jumped at the chance! I was pleasantly surprised at how relaxed I felt as the shutter snapped.

My neighbor’s daughter owns Megapixie Photography, a professional photography studio based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  When I saw her photography on the Megapixie website ~ http://megapixie.com ~ something sparked and I couldn’t wait to start putting together a portfolio.    Megapixie offers a small business package that was perfect for my needs.

Established in 2010, the owner of Megapixie is Annemie Tonken.    Annemie is the Dutch version of Anne Marie and is pronounced like the “onomy” in economy or autonomy.  Annemie specializes in fine art child and family photography. A visit to her website with photos of lots of happy bubbly babies and children will make you smile!  Fortunately she enjoys the art of food photography too.  She made me feel completely at ease by  spending some time getting to know me and my expectations prior to the photo session.  She asked me to send examples of the types of photographs I enjoy ~ photos of food and cooks/chefs.  She was encouraging and gently nudged me towards some things that she knew would work well from her wealth of experience.  I love color and she encouraged me to have several “wardrobe changes” because some colors reflect different levels of light better than others.

I had lots of props ready and we  had great fun changing up the set as she clicked the shutter.   The first thing I did that morning to get ready for the photo session was to collect Spring flowers from my garden…Red Bud branches and tiny Grape Hyacinth flowers.  Did you know that Red Bud flower buds are edible?  They have a fresh, slightly sweet tart flavor.

And of course we had several bottles of champagne ready to pop open over the course of the sunny Friday morning…but just for snappin’ photos not for sippin!  Since country ham biscuits are my signature dish I made some to photograph.

Here’s Annemie taking photos in my kitchen.

One of the first photos she took was a photo of a champagne glass and some blue hyacinths on an antique cobblers bench. My mother bought the bench in the 1950’s at an antique store when they first moved to Roanoke, Virginia.  It made a beautiful backdrop for the photographs.   I was tickled that Annemie chose the cobblers bench because it has always been one of my favorite pieces of furniture. I can just imagine a cobbler sitting on the bench thoughtfully making shoes.  Annemie sat on the floor and then climbed on a stool to get just the right shot.

Here she staged the pouring of champagne into a champagne flute. By using candles lit behind the flute she made it look like an evening of celebration.

I anticipate many uses for my photographs. I will use this photo for future submissions to magazines and other publications.  Thank you Megapixie for this fabulously fun  photo session!

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