The trick is to smoke the meat and not make the meat smoke
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Photography

Why Do You Take So Many Pictures?

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If you’ve been elsewhere on this site, the title of this blog may seem self evident. But what caused me to have to answer this question, was a visit from a friend when I was doing a practice run for a Christmas side dish. I was snapping multiple pictures of every phase of what I was doing and he finally said: “I had no idea you shot so many pictures of the things you make. Why do you take so many pictures when you could just take the pictures you need to use on your site?” While I was answering his question, it occurred to me there might be a blog in this. Some of the answers are obvious and some equally good reasons are not obvious. So here is a list of the reasons I document in pictures all the new recipes I make, from start to finish. Read More...
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My 300th Picture Post - Hard to Believe

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The ORANGE MARINATED PORK LOINS picture entry marks my 300th unique picture post to this site. I was looking at some site statistics about a month ago for other reasons and I saw I was approaching 300 picture pages. Looking into it a little further I found I’ve posted 3,600 pictures in just the picture entries area of the site. This doesn’t include the pictures in the Blog, Gear, or Que Cal areas of the site. Speaking of blogs I am approaching my 200th blog entry. When I first made the site live in January of 2006, I really didn’t know if I could sustain a blog. My whole growth process over the years, which this site documents has amazed not only me, but friends and family alike. I take no credit for it though. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the great cookbooks out there and the help of others who have been willing to share their knowledge with me. Read More...
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Food Photography Tips

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I bought my first serious gas grill and first digital camera in 2003. For the past seven years I have taken close to 30,000 food photos, of which 3,500 have been used for the picture page entries on this site. While I am not a professional food photographer (nor do I play one on TV) I do get compliments from folks on my food photos. About 5 years ago I made a calendar using Apple’s iPhoto with pictures of the food items I’d cooked that year. I had one copy printed and I figured it would be of little to no interest to anyone but me. It turned out I was wrong. Over the years as people have seen it, I have had relatives, friends and co-workers express an interest in getting a copy. This really surprised me, but it means on some level I am doing some things right. My shots aren’t fancy studio type shots that are set up an designed with great attention to detail and utilize fancy lighting set ups and cameras on tripods. I am documenting what I am making and serving with a hand held camera on the fly. If you are looking for a blog entry about food this isn’t it. This blog will discuss some of the things I have learned to date about shooting food pictures. Read More...
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A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words - Quick Tip

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I often keep time temperature logs of my smokes. These are great because two or three years later I can go back to them and see how long a certain recipe took. For short cooks on the gas grill I generally don’t do this. But the other day something occurred to me. I always document the first time I cook a particular recipe in photos. I use the pictures on this site, I sometimes post them on another web site, I can look at the time stamps to see how long the various steps took or the total time, and I can do a quick review to refresh my memory the nexIMG_0784-Blog-300x225t time I make it. Since I have the camera out at the grill to take pictures of the finished product as it comes off the grill, why not take a picture of the remote read thermometer reading and the elapsed time on the timer on my iPhone. This photo get included with the other photos for that cook and now I have something I can refer to when I revisit this recipe at some future time.

I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me sooner, but there is another similar thing I have been doing for a while. That is to take a close up picture of the meat label. This also becomes part of the photo album for that cook and down the road I can see the cut I used, the weight and the price. If they add the Use By date you can also tell how much ahead of time you can buy it.



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More Perspective on Aperture

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This is a follow up to my blog entry of few weeks ago on Aperture, Apple’s prosumer photography software, which I am now using in place of iPhoto to manage all of my digital photographs. In the process of moving from iPhoto to Aperture I have learned several important points that might be worth your knowing. This website does combine two of my hobbies: grilling & smoking plus photography. Every once in a while I write a blog about the photography or computer side of things. This entry is one of those times, so a fair warning to you - if you want to read about grilling or smoking, stop right here and use the recently added “Index of Blogs” link found in the masthead above. If you are an Apple Macintosh user looking for a possible alternative to iPhoto, then read on. Read More...
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Aperture

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Every once in a while I write blog entry about software that helps make my cooking, photography or website chores easier. This blog entry is about Apple’s Aperture 3 which is a photo management software I started using several months ago. So if you are here for a food related entry you should try a different blog entry. Also this software happens to be Mac only, so if you only have Windows PC’s this may not be your cup of tea either. If you have a Mac and find yourself outgrowing iPhoto or if you spending quite a bit if time in Photoshop Elements or some other editing program too, read on.
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