Coursework.. It's not so bad!

I thought I would add my latest writing sample!! I am most certainly not a great cook, but I am a huge fan of 101Cookbooks.com. I hope it is as fun to read as it was to write!

Outside a bakery on 33^rd Street in Washington, D.C., the waiting line for customers stretches out the door, and what begins as sweet-tooth gratification turns in to a 45-minute quest for the taste of a Georgetown cupcake. In the movie theater, Julie&Julia serves up a woman’s journey for contentment along with dinner ideas, while Anthony Bourdain waits on TV viewers and brings out cuisines from around the world. Culinary art seems to be leavening everywhere. As this fad encounters a concurrent fad of amateurism, the effect is a cluster of 21^st-century foodies who crave not only the food itself but also the total, hands-on creation of a food experience. Heidi Swanson is one such gourmand, but her actual notability is that she is a photographer and designer turned food blogger turned cookbook author, in that order. In 2003, Swanson cooked up her blog “101 Cookbooks” with the hope of sharing recipes that complemented her hunger for travel, photography, and whole foods, and today her full-bodied collection runs the gamut of taste testers—from food critics for The Washington Post to graduate students in Arizona. One of her more recent blogs posted on May 31, 2010, “Six-Seed Soda Bread Recipe” epitomizes Swanson’s work and showcases her ability to stir a trip to Portland, some cookery, and a little sensory text together in to one photograph that feeds the eye and makes the stomach anticipate its turn.

The particular recipe comes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Everyday, Swanson’s cookbook find in Portland that features local fare. She logs the materialization of the recipe with a variety of pictures, but it is the headlining photograph that gives the quintessential shot of the subject matter: the accomplished six-seed soda bread. Hugging close to the front of the picture space, the loaf is off-centered and cut slightly short by the right side of the frame. The scale of the bread earns the dominance of the picture plane, but the uncertain size of the plate, which is cut off on three different fronts, balances the height and depth of the bread, making it appear manageable to the consuming eye and appetite. The light on the upper left counterbalances the heavy right side of the frame. The use of a Canon DSLR with a fixed, 50mm lens permits a shallow depth of field that preserves, and likewise pronounces, the unique contours of the bread, which is further emphasized by the close, slightly elevated angle of the shot. The front portion of the bread and the area of the plate directly below are in sharper focus, while the “fuzzy” far-left side leads the eye toward an even “fuzzier” background. Together, the composition, angle, and perspective ensure the basic focus of the viewer is on the soda bread; however, the food is not the only item for sale here, as these three elements also serve an experience. The open composition implies that the picture frame gives only a slice of a larger setting, and as the plate protrudes suggestively in to actual space, the viewer is made to feel as though he or she is sitting at the table, ready to dine.

The choices in color and lighting for the photograph enhance this inviting ambiance as well as advocate the recipe. Instead of distancing the scene with a black and white or sepia effect, Swanson employs harmonizing colors in cool hues to give a sense of temporal presence and to create a warm, fairly muted image. The photograph is comprised of various shades of browns, grays, and greens, and the earthy tones play to the organic ingredients found in the soda bread. The intensity of the specks of white call attention to the fact that the loaf is made from scratch and freshly baked. To develop the cooking experience, the still life is situated indoors yet still presented with natural lighting. In one blog, Swanson declares, “No Flash. Ever. Unless you want your food to look sweaty and greasy....” In addition, the combination of quiet colors and soft lighting romanticizes the image to draw the foodie to the recipe and to allude to one of the underlying subjects of the photograph: an appeal to incorporate all-natural food substances for a healthier, more environment-friendly lifestyle.

The manipulation of textures, lines, and visual noise accentuates the man-made and organic elements found in the photograph. The simulated texture of exposed seeds and scattered particles of grain and flour denote nature, while both the plate and wooden table are clearly processed by man. Containing all-natural ingredients yet prepared by human hands, the bread becomes the ultimate medium where the intersection of man and nature takes place. The embellished residue on the plate plays up the traces of flour on the loaf, neither of which are authentic to a completely baked piece of bread but, nevertheless, indicate a homemade product. The line of the dish frames the bread and the cookery, and the running grain of the table adds an illusion of depth and suggests a greater dining experience. As the texture and lines of the background are deemphasized by their blurred quality, the viewer is left to fill in the gaps with either a memory of a personal experience or an eagerness to fashion a similar one. Finally, the visual noise, or the surrounding objects in the photograph that decorate the subject matter, helps narrate the episode, and the purposeful untidiness humanizes the event. The moment, together with the recipe, feels accessible.

Both the accompanying text and the other photographs reinforce the correlation of food, photograph, and place. Engaging all five senses, the word choices augment the scene set visually by the photograph, and the blogger discusses with the reader, step by step, her own experience of finding and preparing the recipe. Consequently, the “before and after” photographs function simultaneously as an allurement and as a sort of proof of process. In her narrative, Swanson also includes details from a past travel to Portland, an insertion that almost blurs the distinction between kitchen work and holiday-like leisure. The treatment of Portland also strengthens the organic, rustic traits seen in both the pictures of the soda bread and the recipe, because the included photographs from the trip are of the natural landscape and Swanson in front of (and suggestively a part of) this landscape.

Keeping in mind this natural-unnatural dialectic of experience, the use of the Internet as the “source of emission” proves an interesting ingredient of the “Six-Seed Soda Bread Recipe.” The Internet removes the physical act of flipping through cookbook pages and expedites the selection process, and these conditions appear in direct discord with the intention of a recipe, which advocates reaching for the oven handle rather than the microwave button. Then again, Swanson is now the author of two corporeal cookbooks; therefore, her online blog developed into an extraordinary marketing tool. Not only does the Internet conveniently broadcast to a vast public, but because the essence of its functionality is that anyone can use it as a “channel of transmission,” the Internet also is on a par with a do-it-yourself culture or, as previously mentioned, amateurism. When the recipe is encountered on the Internet, the amateur, accessible quality of the online blog can be transmitted to the recipe, which, in turn, becomes doable to anyone. Consequently, as it lures the viewer in to the recipe, the photograph of the soda bread interacts with the mouthwatering story and the digital venue, and collectively they utter to the reader, the foodie, the traveler, or any style of amateur, “You can make this, too.”