It's day 9 of my marathon effort of photographing 55 recipes in under 28 days. I have photographed 29 recipes so far and have 26 to go so I am past the half way mark. The end of this week has been difficult mentally and physically as I went out on a sprint earlier in the week trying to complete between four and five recipes a day to get ahead. This left me feeling pretty wrecked by the middle of the week which in turn left me only completing two recipes a day for the latter part.

The dreary weather and overcast days have wreaked havoc on my photographs and pushed my skills to its limit. There was one particular day which the sun didn't peek its shining face out at all which left me in a quandary to try and maintain the bright and airy feel to the photographs. I have only started using the Manual setting on my camera over the past month so I am still learning on the fly on how to best use this setting to take a good photograph. Previously I had been using the Aperture Priority setting but wanted to push myself to learn the manual side of the camera.

That particular day turned into disaster when I forgot to up my ISO to compensate for the dark conditions which forced me to turn my shutter speed to a slow setting which then resulted in camera shake = blurry pictures = sad sad me! I didn't check the quality of the photographs until the end of the day after I had safely packaged all the food I had prepped and cooked that day away into the fridge. Needless to say I was a little bit devastated. I now have gotten into the habit of quickly checking the images on the computer before packing up the setup. This will save me any heartbreak in the future.

Eggs seemed to have been a bit of a theme this week with me photographing an omelet, poached eggs and scrambled eggs. Would you believe the recipe I was most nervous about cooking was the omelet. Yes I had never prepared or cooked one before.... Shock Horror! I know. My sister-in-law came over the day I had to cook it to look after my little boy because I needed no distractions cooking this. Ha. Not really. I got the omelet first go and styled it to what I hoped to be a perfect looking omelet to devour. Unfortunatley it was stone cold once I had finished photographing it so I packed it up to use later that night in fried rice for dinner.

Being the perfectionist that I am I am having a struggle reviewing the photos that I have take in the previous days. I look at them with such a critical eye that I come away feeling like my skills have gotten worse and my styling is getting old. I guess you feel like that after trying to come up with 29 different ways to style different foods and I have 26 more recipes to put a fresh and creative spin on. I have been delving in my favourite recipe books and blogs for inspiration on styling and composing photographs. My favourites are any cookbook by Donna Hay and blogs such as Tartelette and What Katie Ate just to name a few. This project is pushing me beyond what I thought I was capable of but also testing my mental and physical capabilities. Bring on the next 29 recipes!