A photographer is more than their price tag

This post is a rant. If you're not in the mood for reading someone else's crap (i.e. mine) please be warned!
I've just been looking at a wedding photographer's website and their work. On their site I can see evidence of four wedding shoots. Count that: one, two, three, four. They're advertising a 7 hour shoot for R10 000. Fair enough they're adding in a few extras . . . but really!! R10 000 for someone with four shoots under their belt. I also see evidence of portrait shoots, but what worries me is that the portrait shoots are not of the same calibre as the wedding shoots. So I wonder - are the weddings shot by the same photographer? Or were the weddings shot as assistant to a really good photographer - someone who likely set up the shots, chose the location, the lighting, the mood? I have to admit, I'm so angry I could spit. What ever happened to working your way up from the bottom? How does someone with four weddings justify a starting rate of R10 000? It pisses me off because I see a lot of people assuming that this is an easy industry and an easy way to make money! And if people walk in with four weddings and want to charge R10 000 then how is the average client meant to judge what's fair and what's not?  All too often people assume that if the price is high the quality has to be good . . . that is so not the case!
And as a post script of sorts: the photographer whose site I was on: the shots all look like they come off a 50mm lens. One lens. R10 000 for a wedding shoot. F*ck'n hell!
A second post script: each of those four weddings featured had about 10 to 15 shots. I kid you not.

Food Photographer

I've recently been doing food shots for a couple of hotels and restaurants and it's been really cool. So yesterday morning and then today at lunch time I got a bee in my bonnet and just felt like shooting some of the things that Dan and I have been cooking. It's been a seriously lazy weekend - one of my last free weekends before the wedding season hits in earnest and apart from going to a friend's birthday on Friday I've done as little as humanly possible . . . except eat, cook and watch movies. And take the occasional food photo.

So yesterday I woke early and decided to make flapjacks. First I made coffee and then I did flapjacks. Dan normally does the flapjacks in our household. While I'm a pretty good cook I absolutley suck at baking, or baking type cooking . . . it scares me and flapjacks scare me. It was a moment of bravery that led to the scaling of the flapjack mountain. Though, I did have help. Half way through preparations Dan woke from his deep slumber and slumped downstairs. Soon as I saw him I asked if he'd do the actual cooking and flipping of the flapjacks. And when they were done . . . they were just beautiful.

And the recipe comes from a cook book for children so I figured that even I should be able to get somewhere with it. 

At lunch time(ish) Dan's mom popped through. My mom-in-law rocks. She's the type of mom-in-law who pops round and brings food and goodies with her - which is especially fabulous if you're having a lazy as possible weekend and you don't want to leave the house more than what's absolutely, utterly necessary. She brought with her bread, chocolate (yumm), doughnuts and fillet.

There's a tradition in Dan's household that on your birthday you get fillet steak. Specifically, you get old man steak. Which is flambed in brandy and served with a cream, mushroom and rosemary sauce that's had the fillety flambed juices added to it. I once got the recipe for it from Pegs (mom-in-law) but I've subsequently lost it. It was Dan's dad's birthday and anniversary of his death recently (he died ten days after his birthday) and I wondered if that's why Pegs didn't bring us fillet steak (even on a subconscious level). So this afternoon I made my homage to old man steak. You'll see the pics for it aren't great . . . but I wasn't going to stuff about getting the shot right when that was waiting for me to tuck in.

The fillet was magnificent (done just over rare) and the mash was gorgeous: while the potatoes were boiling I added two teaspoons of Dijon mustard and a table spoon of honey. The sauce was loosely based on the old man steak sauce and also loosely based on a sauce my Dad made last weekend. I fried button mushrooms in butter with garlic and rosemary sprigs. Once the mushrooms had released their liquid I added Nomu's liquid beef stock (Nomu stock absolutely rocks) and then I put in about 2/3s of a tub of cream and just let it boil away. It probably could've boiled down for longer but I was hungry and Dan was hungry so I started the steaks and oh my god they were good!!

 You can see more pics from my lazy weekend in this blog post on my site, and there are more food pics that I've shot here. Enjoy :) .