Before and After Shots

I've been thinking about these apples and their shiny reflexions on a red stove. I've been thinking about pictures of pretty food that is half eaten when photographed. I've been thinking about the details of comfort and surplus.

And then I feel guilty.

There is something about the image of haphazard ingredients or a photo of food mid meal. It's something we see all the time now on blogs (orangette, for one) and in artsy cookbooks. This is a new thing within the last decade or two. My grandmother's cookbooks always contained images of perfect molded aspects and parsley laden platters of untouched food. Why the shift??

Zeitgeist of our time -- I say. Messy plates with utensils dropped mid bite is a 21 century icon. It says, "I'm not making this because I have to -- it can't be bought and I don't need to sell it anyway. I've made this pretty because I have time and money to throw towards one more apple galette that I can't even be bothered to finish. -- HA!"

So why do I want to post about how superficial my apple galette has made me in body and soul??

Because I think it's important to see ... and photograph ... the small details of my world. It's an exercise into seeing the details of bigger worlds. Yesterday, as I was literally day dreaming of green apples against a pomegranate wall, I drove past Orem cemetery going 45 miles per hour. I caught a glimpse of two different groups of people surrounding grave side services. One of them had 200 people and row after row of flower sprays. The other had four frozen mourners surrounding a tiny pink casket. The whole experience lasted only "one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand" and then I had sped past it. A three second exposure to my brain with my natural 50mm lens in my eye.

Perhaps spending the morning looking at green apples was part of learning to see details and life's juxtapositions even when driving through life at 45 miles per hour.

(This shot is a little bit tipsy, but I like it anyway.)