Breakfast of Champions

My favorite thing to do for breakfast is to sit in my recliner, reading the morning paper, while eating a toasted and butter bagel with a cup of freshly brewed Peet's (or Starbucks) French Roast coffee. So, it only makes sense that I should capture what I see every weekend morning.

And, yes, I still read actual newspapers - there is nothing else like it. In fact, we subscribe to both the San Francisco Chronicle (my wife's paper) and the Sacramento Bee (mine, because of the excellent coverage of our budget debacle).

This was a very easy shoot, both because I used all natural light, and because you can take pictures of bagels and coffee all day and they don't visibly melt, wilt, get soggy or turn odd colors. I was a bit dark, even with the window light, so I was shooting at 1/20th of the second at ISO 800. I braced myself against the arm of the chair to keep the camera still.

It was easy to set up, since I already had a good idea of what I wanted. It only took a few minutes to compose the shot (using an empty plate and mug) and the shooting itself lasted only a couple of minutes. Our bagels were still hot when we stopped shooting and opened our papers.

The shot above is probably my favorite, but I liked the following two as well:





Here's the setup (such as it was). My wife held a reflector just this side of the plate to reflect the light back onto the food.


Click on the images to get more information.