In the run-up to Christmas, as is well known, there is a lot of baking: cookies, more cookies, stollen and whatever else is delicious. Of course, this is always great fun for the whole family. But have you ever wondered what photography and baking have in common?

Well?

Exactly. Very little. Not to say: nothing at all.

You need …

Since great-grandma’s time, baking goes something like this: Take 150 grams of flour, 3 eggs, 100 grams of sugar, a pinch of baking powder and mix everything into a smooth paste. Then put it in the oven for 20 minutes at 200 degrees. And voila – the cake is ready.

If you follow the recipe, then success is pretty much guaranteed. The cake always turns out perfectly!

And what about photography? Some participants in the beginner photography courses hope that Rainer and Simone will give them recipes like those in Mary Berry’s Baking Bible: Take 1/125 second, f 8, ISO 200 and press the release button. And you get the perfect photo. And that’s exactly what the camera manufacturers’ advertising suggests.

Some book authors have recognized what the amateur photographer really wants. A brief (and probably incomplete) search on Amazon yielded the following hits:

  • Photography Cookbook: 52 Photographic Recipes
  • The Boudoir Photography Cookbook: 60 Recipes for Tempting Photos
  • The Lighting Cookbook: Foolproof Recipes for Perfect Glamour, Portrait, Still Life and Corporate Photographs

Photography by recipe

It’s as simple as that. Only Rainer and Simone have not yet grasped this. They are still doing such cumbersome courses, which are about understanding the basics. Or to train one’s own perception. Or analyzing images to understand why a photo does or does not have an effect on the viewer. Actually, the two believe that photography has more to do with cooking than baking. When baking, everything is stirred together according to the recipe and one hopes that something edible will come out at the end of the baking time. When cooking, on the other hand, the quantities vary, seasonings are added, cooking times are adjusted as needed, and so on and so forth. Depending on personal taste, the quality of the ingredients and a bit of chance, it turns out different every time.

Maybe that’s a good thing. If we all would photograph only after recipes, everything would always turn out as uniform mishmash.

Yours truly Louise von Tharau

Disclaimer: The articles in the section “Louise’s World – Waddled Off” do not necessarily represent the opinion of the editorial staff