fresh — onion tart

Posted by Sara Gettys on Feb 23, 2011 | 1 comment

Inspired by both my love of food (cooking and eating) and photography, this month starts a monthly photo column in the Yakima Herald-Republic’s Taste section. I wanted to post a few outtakes from the shoot and also a simple explanation of the lighting I used in one of the photos.

First, I dug up these onions from my garden as I was clearing out dead leaves — a chore long overdue. They were so pretty I immediately wanted to photograph them and that shoot became the inspiration for my first column. Here are a couple outtakes from that shoot.

After photographing these little raw onions, I decided to make a blue cheese onion tart as the dish to feature in the column. It’s one of my favorite comfort food dishes, easy and yummy. To shoot the finished tart, I decided on simple light — using the soft window light that comes into the dining area at my house. This is the same light I used on the above shots of the onions. I tend to shoot a lot of things at my kitchen table just because the light is so nice, the windows on two sides cast a soft, even light that is slightly directional. The shoot was quick: choose a pretty cutting board, pull the tart out of the oven, set it on the table, adjust the angle, shoot, eat!