I was a little torn about whether to blog about this here, or to put the pictures up on my other photoblog. In the end, I thought you might enjoy abit of cake porn on a Monday.

Introducing… Gails.

Abit of background, Gails is a bread maker looking to revolutinise the way we eat bread, by baking and selling awesome bread and cakes to the unsuspecting London republic. They are still quite a small group, but one that is growing. Currently, there are three branches and their forth is due to open this Wednesday at Clapham.

I was in the Notting Hill branch last week to shoot some cake, and taste a couple.

I hadn’t really had much time for this, I sandwiched this assignment in between finishing up a lunch at Sketch at 3pm, and rushing off to another meeting immediately after at 5 and I was hoping 2 hours plus abit of time for travel was enough to cram in all home.

I turned cake down, seriously.

Looking back to the trip, I was so utterly amazed at myself: I said no to cake. These are the chocolate fondant ones, you know, the ones with a melting centre, what’s the name for it, a chocolate moelleux. Although, I only turned it down because of a really heavy lunch at Sketch (which by the way, rocked, and shall be reviewed/blogged about on Friday.).

Photographing food is usually quite difficult, one needs to resist the temptations, and trust me, all the temptation equals camera shake and rushing through composition. But since I was on a full stomach, this was quite breezy, but still. The temptations lurks….

The brick wall

I really wanted to get a shot of the interiors, and kind of throw the cakes out of focus (any red blooded cake lover would disagree with this I suppose..) and the brick walls seemed like such a nice touch to the whole ambiance of the place. Note the bread tin. I’m on the fence with the composition of this shot, there’s too much emptiness around the image. I think it’s just a little off, and might crop it tighter: more brick wall and less of everthing else.

What do you think folks? Surely among you is an avid photog, feel free to critique.

Money shots

Gails had spotlights which were great for hard directional lighting. The one of the jars was lit with alot of natural light, since it’s just by the door (on its right), while the flat white was placed there by one the staff. I liked these ones, I think they came out quite successfully.

Eating cake

All in all, a pretty tiring one. I was alternating with two prime lenses for this, everything handheld and shutter speedsfluttering around 1/60 to 1/125 at ISO640, some might argue that’s just abit slow for tack sharpness, but ah well, I have steady hands. I did manage to eat something, a pretty sugary cupcake, with raspberry and almonds. It wasn’t quite so moist as I would have liked it to be, although it had a good cushioned consistency and a lovingly baked richness. Not too bad at all, and a nice little reward.

Try me and Gails too

I’m hoping to score a visit to Gail’s bread factory (please, please, please..), that would be a really fun trip, and maybe take one of you along with me too. But we’ll have to wait and see for that one.

You can see the entire gallery at my flickr page here, if you need some food shots, email me, I’m free but you need to feed me.

Happy monday folks.

Gail’s official site
138 Portobello Rd (020) 7460 0766
Kensington, W11 2

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