Spring-colored Bento and a bit of Photography

It's nice to get to blog after a while! I haven't made so many but bento photos have piled up. By the way, here we had the heaviest snow in 27 years this winter and every road has been terrible. But it seems like spring is getting closer bit by bit. Though, it'll be so long until I can view pink sakura blossoms. I've been in a pinky mood lately this shot came out sakura pink in color all around. The bento content is not pink at all though. I like this bento box, which is also from DAISO. I finally noticed that not expensive bento boxes always come in handy haha. Bento boxes themselves don't need to be gorgeous, right?



For this bento, I made tamagoyaki, patatas bravas, two onigiri and an iyokan orange cup.



This strawberry contains chicken soboro zushi, which is a layer of sushi rice, chicken soboro and omelet strips. And I added potato salad and ponkan orange to the bento. 　



This green bento contains yakitori, spicy potato, scrambled egg on brown rice, and iyokan (as always). Fresh greens have been too expensive lately due to the weather. I've been eating potato dishes everyday haha!



There is pretty much the same photo here as the one above. I think I'll talk about photography a bit this time because I have enough time right now hehe. I'm not an expert at all but hope to share some tips about taking shots. If you are advanced you don't need to read this. Instead, could you share nice ideas you have with me? Well, guess what the difference between these two similar photos is? When I took the above shot, the sunbeam was a bit too bright and that was causing the dark shadows over the foods. Then I used thin polystyrene boards on the next shot to cut down the sunlight. That is this shot. The thin bright line is the sunlight that came out of the gap between the polystyrene boards. Which one do you like better? After all, I think it's a matter of preference haha!



While on the other hand, I took these shots in a bit gloomy room in the evening. Yuppi made some cupcakes for Hinamatsuri (Girls' Day) by the way. I had to photograph them without enough sunlight, but I didn't want to use lighting so I used the manual exposure control of my camera (which is a function every kind of camera has). I think many of bento makers have problems related to the lack of light. You can get brighter pictures even early in the morning by controlling exposure. The more you bump up the positive number of exposure control, the brighter pictures you will get, only the more easily camera-shake will get reflected on the pictures. To avoid it, a tripod and self-timer will help. You could get more clear pictures by using them. I think there are some inexpensive types of tripods out there. Maybe mine was 3000 yen or so... It might have been less than it. There are even ones you can buy for just a few hundred yen. It wouldn't hurt to have one.



I hope all those celebrated Hinamatsuri had a wonderful Girls' Day!