I've Decided that Food is Art

I've been thinking. I have two voices on the internet (well, two that I care about, anyway); I've got this blog, WeberShots, and I've got Thoughts (of a 20-something-year-old engineer). The tag-line for WeberShots, up until this point, has been "A blog of just about anything related to WeberShots or photography." Admittedly, I've been fairly sparse in my postings on either of those two topics.

I excuse myself because I'm a college student, and even if its a year later before I do, I will eventually post on here again. On the flipside, Thoughts has had many a post about various food ventures for this college undergrad, including breaded fish, grape pie, rice-noodle potstickers, pizza-dillas, and banana cinnamon buttermilk pancakes. I'm not saying they don't belong on that blog, but I do want to switch things up for a bit. WeberShots has been emptier not because I've given up photography altogether, but because it has taken a different role in my life as of late.

So I'm going to liven up my WeberShots blog a bit with another form of art: food photography. I'm not going for amazing here, I'm just indulging my tendency to be a foodie. Here are some food items I've failed to post for quite some time, even in my Thoughts. They won't include recipes at this point, but I wanted to share some photos.

GIMP, Image Registration, and HDR

I am typically not one to use image manipulation programs (Photoshop, GIMP, etc.) to enhance my photographs. I believe in a natural preservation of the way things are when I'm painting with light. Althea Hendricksen would agree with me fully.

However, there are situations in which I will give in to photo-editing: (1) if my client asks for the removal of a coincidental blemish, or (2) for the sake of artistic touch. However, in the sense of artistic touch, I believe the photographer should always be clear and honest about the manipulation.

MatE 210 Art Project, Spring 2012

I had a materials engineering class this quarter (MatE 210). It is mainly an introduction class, and was run in a very odd fashion. One of the oddities was the presence of art projects in the midst of this class.

For this last art project, we had to produce a piece of art that supported a view of ours, and then discuss some of the materials involved. It at least had that latter point to relate it to materials engineering. We chose to cover a junked bike frame with photos of bamboo and bike life. The message was that if we enjoy the environment so much, we ought to support using renewable materials (such as bamboo) in our construction, especially for objects, such as bikes, with interact with the environment on a daily basis. It may be a little too green for some people's tastes, but it completed the assignment and constructing the bike was fun.

Overall picture of the bike layout; the frame is composed mainly of bamboo shots,
the seat and wheels of action shots. The separation of colors helps define the
different parts of the bike.