I-DO-I-DO-I-DO!! And it’s the highlight of my month! I had to read the email request from Choco’a, one of my favourite Chocolate boutiques in the city, twice, thrice, before it sank in...would I be up for shooting a few of their gorgeous chocolate and cakefied creations (that I've actually blogged about before, here and here) in their boutiques? Are you kidding me?! Can my camera and I twig together a little nest in your store and photograph dessert all day and night long??

The first day of this two day shooting assignment began this week. I spent much of the day surrounded by chocolate, moving their displays around, re-angling my lens every two degrees and shooting the same things over and over again, occasionally peeling off a price tag and shoving it in a corner so I could photograph a gift arrangement [and then realizing midway that there was a line of now-mixed-up-and-homeless price tags waiting to be stuck back on. oops.]…hundreds and hundreds of shots, just because my camera has this strange uncontrollable magnetism towards food, and I can’t stop clicking for the life of me when faced with that much goodness.

Last evening I sat down to sift through and post-process the massive set of photos I’d taken. As I started narrowing down to a handful of photos that could actually serve some legitimate purpose for Choco'a other than just appeasing my strange camera-food fetish, I realized…WHOA. This is time consuming.

Don't get me wrong – I’m loving every minute of it, and if I could, I'd spend every waking minute rejiggering these photos...BUT, I have a day job (which is – gasp – not food related at all, unless you count lunch breaks.) + an important family milestone coming up this Friday + some major aesthetic personal-overhauling that needs to be done prior to Friday's family gathering + personal emails and facebook messages that have been hankering for attention for days now + maybe a swim squeezed in there somewhere so that my eyeballs don't dangle out staring at the computer screen for so long + I’m nervous about these photos not turning out right + I haven’t even looked at my blog since last week (except now. and since I've barely said anything edible other than a scant word of chocolate or dessert thrown in a few times, it doesn't even count.) and AHHH I FEEL LIKE I’M BEING SUCKED INTO A VORTEX OF ANXIETY AND OH HELL I JUST NERVOUSLY WOODPECKED MY NAILS THAT HAD BEEN MANICURED FOR FRIDAY NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA......

[Voice from vortex]
But I do love food photography. I really, really do. I wouldn't give up shooting chocolate and dessert for the WORLD.
...unless the world had magic trees that bore chocolate-covered espresso beans and white sweet yogurt pretzels.

To regain some semblance of sanity in life, I'm reprioritizing. My blog will be taking a little breather for a few days. Maybe a week, maybe ten days, maybe less, maybe more. Depends on how many of the crazy angled photographs actually move up to the next round of editing. And depends on how wild I go with my camera on Day 2 of the assignment next week.

In the meantime, here’s one of the photos I snapped so that everyone who's read this rambling post thus far, hoping for something remotely food-related, doesn't abandon my poor blog in a fit of raw unsatiated hunger...

And oh, Choco’a owns the exclusive rights to the two photos in this post, so please, please, please don’t use these photos in any way. Not like anyone would want to, but if you did, just imagine a friend-who-you-want-as-more-than-a-friend discovering a mug shot of you holding a 345682A placard, and asking you about it. What would you say…‘I inappropriately used a copyrighted picture of petit gateaux’? Lame.

Anyhoo, wish me luck with getting some decent photos out of this project, I desperately need it. That, any photo editing tips. Or an extra pair of eyeballs.

[Wow, if someone could have broken a new record for an out-of-blogosphere message, I think I may have just broken it.]