Every photo starts with a feeling. A gut reaction to something in front of us — a flicker of “wow,” a spark of curiosity, or in this case… a craving. The challenge is to take that very real, very three-dimensional moment and flatten it into a two-dimensional photograph — without losing the feeling that stopped you in your tracks.
What struck me here wasn’t just that it was a cupcake. It was the frosting. Thick, wavy, unapologetically chocolate.
I have never — ever — been able to get frosting to look like that on anything I’ve made in my kitchen. It had texture. It had drama. It had personality.
To bring out that rich, swirled texture, I placed an external flash low and off to the side. That angle swept light across the surface like a spotlight on a mountain range — carving out highlights and shadows that turned chocolate into a landscape.
Now, shiny objects like that little plastic heart? They’re trickier. They reflect everything — especially you, your camera, and your cluttered dining room if you’re not careful. So I grabbed a piece of white cardstock and held it just out of frame. It acted like a tiny reflector, adding clean white highlights to the heart and giving it a little sparkle of its own.
White and black cardstock are some of my favorite secret weapons in small-scale shoots like this. Simple, cheap, and super effective. If this kind of thing excites you — if you want to understand why the light does what it does — do yourself a favor and check out the book Light: Science and Magic. It’s not just a manual — it’s a flashlight in the dark corners of photography.
More from my kitchen-table studio: An Apple a Day, the one with the ironing board.
Print orders are paused while I move to Florida. You can still look at Love in the shop, and if you’d like an email when I’m open again, send me a note and I’ll let you know as soon as it’s back.