Banana Puuuuudding...mmmm

I used to photograph my food creations all the time. I loved it! It was a way to capture what I was so proud of. It was like, Hey look! I DID THAT! I made that!! ME!! (squeeee!!)

I haven't been doing it very much lately. And when I say "lately" I mean, like, since my son was born 11 months ago. I mean, I don't have tons of time to cook my husband elaborate meals with exotic spices and marinades anymore. I used to scour recipe books and food websites looking for the best of the best! Hell, now I just wanna make something quick and easy. Am I right, or am I right?!

Well, this recipe isn't so quick and it wasn't so easy (but not too hard either!) Which was kind of nice. It was a flashback to those proud times in the kitchen!

We're set to move in a few days (so I should be packing some more, but whatever) and we had a lot of bananas to get rid of. A few nights ago, the hubby randomly said he was craving banana pudding. I've never made it before (or any pudding from scratch) but I just watched an episode of Cooks Country on PBS that previous weekend and thought it didn't look too hard. Perfect!

I have the Cooks Country magazine subscription and knew the recipe was also in there, but I'm moving and that mag is packed away somewhere. This is where The Faux Martha comes in! I found her blog online (and love it now) where she made and posted the recipe. Awesome!!

I'm not a food blogger, so I'm just gonna post the four photos I got. If you want the recipe, head over to The Faux Martha. I don't wanna type the recipe out. LOL. I was doing this alone, so I had to cook and stir! There just wasn't a lot of time for photography!

So here I bring you...*drumroll* Banana Pudding!

First thing's first, the recipe calls for 3 of the 7 bananas to be roasted. Not a big deal! Just pop them in the oven for 20 minutes at 325 degrees and bang! They're done. Those were roasting while I was preparing my custard.

But here's the bananas when they're done. All icky, dark and shiny. they're perfect! The roasted bananas brought a wonderful deep flavor. It's a must do!


While the naners were roasting, I mixed the egg yolk mixture. Easy peasy!

After that was combined, I brought the half and half mixture to a simmer.

Now for one of the scariest moments in dessert making. Tempering the eggs! I hate doing this. I almost always do it too fast and cook the eggs...but not this time!! Not a curdle in sight! And after continuous stirring...

PUDDING!!!!! And it was glooohhhh-rious! 

Anyone who's had traditional banana pudding knows it's layered with vanilla wafers. I did that, but did not take pictures. I was too busy layering! I don't have a trifle dish either, so I opted to use my casserole dish. I mean, it all goes into the same place, people! In the tummy!!

Oh yea, see that on top of the pudding? That's HOMEMADE whipped cream. Thankyouverymuch.    

Let me tell you something. This banana pudding is AH-MAZING. I actually split the recipe up into three containers and gave one to my sister, brought one to work, and kept one at home. Everyone thought it was soo delicious. I even got a "You put your foot in this!" Now, anyone who knows what that means knows it can't get better any than that. :)

Sidenote: All photos were taken with SS 1/125, f/3.2, ISO 200

A Good Save! + a Before and After...and another after!

I really love this shot of my son at the pumpkin patch. However, it's REALLY underexposed, but I really really wanted to save it! He has an olive-y/tan skin tone and when his skin gets underexposed he tends to get quite orange-y in the shadows (and orange or yellow in photos in general), and makes for a LOT of work for mama in post-processing. Good thing I love Photoshop!

But the thing is...in my first "AFTER" of Ben, I didn't like the end result. I've been thinking about it since I posted it. Like, nonstop. It's really been bugging me. So, I decided to take another look and tweak it some more in ACR. I'm really really happy with the result I have this time. *sigh* haha!!

Here's the really underexposed BEFORE:




Here's the AFTER that I processed the other day and posted in my last blog post (notice the yellowness and dark orange tones in the creases in his face? I sure did!!):




And here's AFTER the AFTER:



It is by no means perfect, but it's much more pleasing to me than the last one. I do realize that with his skin tone, he will always have an orange-y hue in his creases. But I love him to bits, so that's okay :)

I do all of my pre-editing (fixing WB, exposure, adding warmth, etc...) in ACR before bringing it into Photoshop. This time, I used all MCP actions to brighten a bit more and used her "One-Click Color" to enhance it. I love this action. It always provides the perfect amount of "pop" to the photos and they're all so tweakable. Love them!

I think this photo is now frame worthy!

Pumpkin Patch!

We decided to take Ben to his very first pumpkin patch yesterday! He had an awesome time playing with the hay and touching all the pumpkins! My sister and niece decided to come along too :) I admit, I wanted to go to the pumpkin patch more than ANYONE, just for the photo ops! We got there kind of late and since it's "fall" (I'm in Los Angeles, so "fall" just means cloudy...boo for me) it was getting dark pretty fast. Not to mention that it suddenly became overcast! Basically, I was a picture takin' fool RIGHT when we got there. Ordering the hubby to put Ben here and there, fix his jacket!, Ben! Look at Mama! I was sweating bullets, people!

Earlier in the day I made a nice list on my iPhone of the poses and moments that I wanted to capture. Yea, right! My plan of attack was to get some structured poses first and then get more lifestyle shots of when we all actually picked out pumpkins and what-not. I didn't any lifestyle shots at all, and I am so bummed about it! Those are the type of shots I actually prefer, but I wanted to get some portrait-type shots to mix it up. By the time I was finished with the poses, literally 10 minutes because of the light, it had gotten too dark to even attempt any with my D90. The D90 is horrible with noise!

I'm going to FORCE myself to submit something over on CM for critique tomorrow. I'm really trying to hone my black & white editing skills, so I might submit the few that I have here to see if I'm headed in the right direction. I WILL DO IT!! :-\

Well, here's what I got! My husband Steve is also a newbie photographer, he was first! haha! So I posted some of his photos too :)

1/250, f/2.8, ISO 200 (No, he's not growling...this is his "Cheesin'" face!! He's such a happy baby. He doesn't do nice smiles so much anymore...he'll go from a straight serious face right to this one! I love this so much, it's so him!!) Didn't seem to nail focus on this one! :(


1/250, f/2.8, ISO 200


1/250, f/2.2, ISO 200


1/250, f/2.2 ISO 250


1/200 f/3.5, ISO 800 (The learning curve to get multiple people in focus is hard! I have to practice on this more!)


1/180, f2.4, ISO 800 (Steve's pic)


1/180, f2.8, ISO 800 (Steve's pic)


1/180, f/2.8, ISO 800 (Steve's pic)


1/200, f1.4, ISO 800 (My sister and niece!)


1/250, f/2.2, ISO 250


1/200, f/1.4, ISO 800 (Steve's pic...therefore can't get blamed for the soft photo! haha!)


1/200, f/2.5, ISO 250 (Beautiful niece!)


1/250, f/2.5, ISO 250


1/250, f/2.2 ISO 250 (It looks like my focus fell on the pumpkins?...yikes!)

Wow my settings are all over the place! The light was getting dim fast, so I was frantic! All of the photos with an ISO of 250 were taken earlier in the evening and then I had to quickly jump to 800! My Nikon is NOT a fan of the high ISO. I'm also trying to close my aperture and get away from always wanting to shoot in 1.4 with this lens. But alas, I'm not happy with the focus on a lot of these but it's what I ended up with.

Overall, what matters the most is that I captured Ben's first trip to the pumpkin patch! I think he had a great time, but I also saw him freak out at a stuffed gorilla! He's never done that before...so I witnessed my baby get scared for the first time too :(

I'm finding that going back to look my settings to post them on here is another way to see what I could have done differently. I like!

Fix-it-Friday!

I love photoshop and any opportunity that I can to practice, I'll take it! Therefore, I love Fix-it-Friday's over on I Heart Faces!

Here's today's challenge:

Here's my edit!

I did it really quick right before I left for work this morning. I would have spent a little more time on the background if I had more time!

I'm pulling this off the top of head, but here were my steps:

• -made WB adjustments and light fill in ACR;
• -added some more light fill to brighten the face;
• -ran Dull to Dazzling action from Michelle Kane;
• -ran the Mulberry tone from M4H;
• -stretched the canvas on the right and selected a portion of the canvas and did a "Content Aware" stretch to fill in the space with the white background;
• -cloned out the other balloon;
• -cloned a "good" part of the background at a 15% opacity to clone out the edge of the table and blend it in to look like a seamless background;
• -straightened and cropped; and
• -added a new layer in the "Multiply" blending mode with an inverted mask to add a slight vignette!

There it is (and I hope this all made sense!) I think it looks pretty good! :)

Baby free post!

I thought I'd share some non-baby photos! :)

Obviously, I love taking photos of my baby boy, but it's nice to broaden the spectrum every once and a while!











Okay, this last one is a slight cheat! It's not a baby, but a macro shot of baby bibs!