Do you ever carry your camera into the kitchen? Next time you want to take pictures indoors, and run out of subjects, try exploring' the realm of stove, icebox and pantry. It's a happy hunting-ground.
"Almost everything in a kitchen is camera subject. The icebox and the china and aluminium ware are a mine of still-life possibilities, and there are opportunities galore for "off-guards" picture whenever a meal is being prepared.
The mixing of a cake can be a picture, if the big mixing bowl is snapped from a high angle with two hands busy with a spoon in the creamy batter. Mohter breathlessly testing the cake with a broomstraw is an opportunity for a "candid" shot. There are pictures, general or close-up, when the cake is being iced. There is a splendid close-up in the cutting of the first slice, with the gleaming long-bladed knife going through the fluffy loaf.
A pile of shining pots and pans;|may make a splendid picture, if the photographer chooses a proper angle A (and works out a "dramatic" lighting, China, wet and glistening in a drain rack, is material for pictures, Even the dishpan, foamy with suds as two hands squeeze out the dishrag above it, is a picture opportunity, The icebox yields eggs and vegetables that can be worked into teresting "still-life" studies. A series of "busy hands" pictures is well worth trying—hands peeling a potato, with a long curl of peel hanging; hands polishing silverware or drying glassware; hands turning a brown pancake on a griddle or lifting a waffle out of the iron—hands doing a thousand and one things!
Picture-making in most kitchens is simple, because the room is usually small and walls and ceiling are generally light in colour. The camera should be loaded with supersensitive film, and three large amateur flood bulbs used in cardboard reflectors. The proper distance from al bulbs to subject is four to six feet. "With this amount of light, one can take snapshots with a box camera at its largest lens opening, or use 1/25 second at £8 or fil lens opening with cameras s0 marked. For close-up pictures, a simple (portrait a! tachment must be used with most cameras.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.