I love food. It’s one of my favorite subjects. My favorite time of day? Lunch. Second favorite? Snacktime.

When did I make this vinagrette? Why am I talking to a loaf of bread?

Snacks are such a personal thing. They’re horded in desk drawers, tucked on top of refrigerators, carried to work or school in briefcases and backpacks. And snacks can be very specific: if you’re a Cheez Its person (like I am), no other cheese cracker will quite do. And I’d wager that to some of you out there, a peanut butter granola bar is *far* different from an oats ‘n’ honey. Maybe an oats ‘n’ honey person will eat a peanut butter in a pinch, but it’s somehow not quite the same.

What I’m getting at here is that you’ve got some go to snacks. Maybe you make them, maybe you walk down the block to the gas station to get them. Whatever your snack is, it’s a part of a lot of your days, a part that rejuvenates and gets you back in the game. It’s a part of your personal style, even. Only some people have the smoke break; everyone has snack break.

Why the snack post? Because I want to know, my socially networked friends, what your snack is, and then I want to photograph you and your snack. It’s a little personal project I’m starting. I’ll even provide the snack itself, or the ingredients with which the snack is built. I’ll work with your schedule. It’ll be fun, because we’ll have snacks.

Boring snack, crazy unique snack, eaten at work or at home. . . I want ‘em all. Share your snack in the comments, and email me at chris (at) chrisbohnhoff.com, or tweet me @chrisbohnhoff and we can do a little snack shoot.

I had gone for a long time since anyone had asked me if I do any studio-style photography: tight control over light in a small space, as opposed to the work I usually do, which is on location, and which I do my best to record as faithfully as possible.

But every once in a while someone asks me if I can take pictures of objects, and two of those happened recently for me within the span of a week. And my answer was, Sure! I can take pictures of anything.

One of the requests came from a friend I met through the Birchwood Cafe, who is also a very talented ceramic artist. She throws functional pieces and does some great stuff with firing them in a wood burning kiln, which I understand is kind of unique. Here are a couple of her pieces

Anna Grace Christiansen Pottery

Anna Grace Christiansen Pottery

And about that studio, you might ask? He’s never mentioned a studio. . .

My swank studio

That’s how I roll: workin’ with what I got.

Last night the Sample Circuit gathered in the swank dining room at Cosmos Restaurant and, as has been my habit this year, I was there to document it.

As I’ve reported in these very blog pages, what Executive Chef Hakan Lundberg does with ingredients is unique to Minnesota. Hakan really gets a kick out of opening a window on to the process for his diners, and last night he and his #1 sous chef were in the dining room creating fois gras lolipops and fruit ‘explosions’ for the crowd. Cool for foodies to be able to see the magic in motion and interact with the chefs.

Fruit explosion magic being perpetrated by sous chef Shawn

Team Cosmos’ version of the Sample Circuit was unique in relation to the others so far this year: much higher degree of difficulty on all the dishes, lots more variety, but no banquet table service, only passed trays.

The Cosmos shrimp cocktail

For those in attendance on their first trip to Cosmos, I’m sure the sample they received has them intrigued and definitely wanting more.

Plenty more photos from the night on the Sample Circuit Flicker stream (supplied by yours truly).

My history with crafts is spotty at best. Elementary school art class is a memory mine field for me; mostly I recall coming home with eerily mushed clay bowls, woven paper placemats, and an inability to draw. But for the past six weeks I’ve been spending an hour each Thursday with a third grade boy. I’m a volunteer with a organization called Art Buddies, and we’ve been working on making my third grade friend a costume. Turns out, thirty years later, I don’t mind art class as much as I remember.

Art Buddies Spring 2009 – Images by Chris Bohnhoff

The basic Art Buddies structure is that people from the creative industry sign up and get paired with a third, fourth, or fifth grader at Whittier International Elementary in South Minneapolis. Over the course of six weeks you and your buddy have an assignment to work on – ours was putting together a costume depicting the child as ‘ruler of the world.’ But the emphasis is on hanging out and just being with your buddy, not so much on the end product (although there is a parade during the last meeting and a chance to show off a little bit).

I don’t have kids of my own, and my friends’ kids that I spend time with are generally in the 1-4 year old range, so this has really been my first one-on-one experience with a 9-year-old. And as week one started, and kids and adult buddies were getting paired up, I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. My buddy is a back of the line, messing around with the other back of the line boys kind of boy, so I had to wait through almost everyone before he made his way over to my table. And there was very little sign of interest as I introduced myself and our assignment, as the Art Buddies organizers guided us to do. We had been encouraged to bring some kind of tools or examples of the work we do in our creative careers, and I had brought my portfolio, and my tripod, and my camera. I asked if my buddy if he wanted to check those things out. Not really. But he was excited to check out the art supplies.

Art Buddies may kid its volunteers in to thinking that they are a big draw for these kids, but on that first Thursday afternoon I saw the truth: the real draw was free reign over a double-sized classroom chock full of bins and bins of art supplies. Fabric, yarn, all manor of little shiny things, hot glue guns, cardboard. . . the possibilities were staggering. And my buddy (with me trailing behind) spent most of that first hour digging through bins and coming back to our table with armfuls of stuff. He had no idea what his costume was going to be, and he didn’t especially want to talk about it, or about any of the other suggested topics, like what makes a good leader. But processing all the textures, colors, and possibilities was exactly what he wanted to do. So that’s what we did.

I learned a few things over the next five weeks with my buddy.

• Not all 9 year old boys are driven to make everything they touch in to some kind of weapon.
• Man, do the kids love them some hot glue guns.
• I can’t tell you the name of the movie or of the actor, but apparently I look like the bad guy killer in some movie that my buddy watched. . . all I can tell you is that it was in some apartment, and the character he said I looked like got mad and killed the landlord, then I killed my girlfriend, but I didn’t really love her, but then the girl that I really loved ended up killing me. Or something like that.
• I like 9 year olds. Even when all signs point to complete zoning out or messing around, they’re processing and figuring stuff out. It’s fun to watch that process and be amazed by what they can do.

As the weeks progressed, It did end up seeming like my  buddy liked hanging out with me. The evidence? We made each other cards after the parade on week six, and his said, “Thanks for being the best art buddy ever.”

Fun additional note: a reporter from the Star Tribune filed this story from our Art Buddies class – my buddy and I are even quoted (even though they spelled my name wrong)!

A difficult fact of life is that people love having good photos of themselves, but they hate the experience of actually having their picture taken.You probably know the feeling: you’re with your friends having a good time and someone has a nice smile going, you bring your camera up to your face, and suddenly everyone else in the room turns in the opposite direction. It’s almost enough to give a photographer a little bit of a complex. . .

Why do people react so strongly to a camera? I think it’s because of all those family pictures people are forced to endure growing up. Remember how it was? You’re a kid and someone asks you to stop what you’re doing, smile for like five minutes while mom or dad figures out how to use the camera, and maybe repeat ten times while you could be off playing? People are trained to think that having their picture taken is no fun.

That’s what we’re up against as photographers: we’re the alternative to having fun and being natural. So what do you need to do to take better pictures of people? Make the act of getting your picture taken fun and natural, so that it’s no longer a choice between fun or photos. Here are some ideas on how to make that happen.

Be confident with your camera.
Nothing kills a moment like making a person hold still while you work out your camera’s functions. So instead of making the shot you want the first shot you attempt, take a minute to sort everything out before you ask your subject to look at you and smile. Take a test shot, review and make sure the lighting and exposure are where you want them to be, then take the real shot.

Make it a real interaction.
When you walk up to someone, say Smile! to them, click, and walk away, the interaction that just happened was between your subject, your camera, and your subject’s insecurities about their appearance. Looking at the picture, you’d see an expression that’s part happiness, part bewilderment, part discomfort.

What works better is to talk to your subject before picking up the camera, even if it’s just a sentence or two, so that your subject is interacting with you, not your camera or their own thoughts. Look at that picture and you see a natural, real expression, not the mask of a smile that most people have reserved for pictures.

Keep talking, and keep shooting.
Another uncomfortable fact of life for photographers is that people blink, they start talking when you don’t think they will, they get distracted. For all these reasons and plenty more, make sure you take at least a handful of pictures for every one that you want.

And while you’re shooting, keep up the interaction so that your subject is still engaged with you on a human level.

Don’t start with, “Stand against this wall.”
The more you have to position someone in a special place and out of their normal surroundings, the lower the likelihood that you’ll get a good picture with a good expression. Better to move yourself so that there’s a nice background behind your subject than to move your subject in to a good background. Remember, it’s all about making your subject comfortable.

Ask permission.
Last but certainly not least, always check in with your subject before shooting. Mostly this applies to situations where you don’t know your subject: in public places you’ve just got to explain what you’re doing to avoid being taken for a stalker or crazy person. But even at a party or a social gathering, making eye contact with a person and establishing some kind of understanding that you’re taking pictures is a good idea. Once that communication is taken care of, make sure everyone’s back to being comfortable and snap away.

Being a good portrait photographer is first and foremost about the personal interaction between you and your subject. Keep these rules in mind and you’ll see better expressions in your pictures, and you’ll have more fun making images.