This document summarizes a student's photography project exploring the concept of time through baking cupcakes. The student plans to capture the baking process either through a stop-motion video or series of photos taken at 5 minute intervals. They have done test shoots baking a birthday cake and struggled with properly setting the white balance in their kitchen. Going forward, the student wants to spend more time ensuring correct lighting and white balance if they were to redo the project.

1. The deliciousness of the
cupcake
Laura Wallace
300252990
Linda Lee
adenahunter@tumblr.com
wh3r3swally@gmail.com

2. Proposal
For the second project the brief asks us to explore the concept in time through the use of photography. We have the choice to
portray time through a minute stop motion or series of 4-8 images.
For this project I am planning of focusing on the time of baking. From DSDN 101 last trimester I know that the planning and
shooting of a stop motion takes more time than expected. From this information I will experiment with a stop-motion or pho-
tos. At this point I am leaning towards a series of photos as I feel that I will be able to express my ideas and inspiration to a bet-
ter extent.
For this project I would really like to stay clear away from what I consider the cliché movement photography of people (e.g.
walking). From wanting to stay away from this cliché I have chosen to focus my project on the time of baking. My ideas are to
photo baking e.g. bread rising, cake rising in the oven, etc. I am not sure how the best way to show this at this point in time. I
will be researching and experimenting with different food on how to best portray time.
For experimentation to decide on either a stop-motion or photos. I am planning on making a stop motion of me making and
decorating my sister’s birthday cake. I am planning on framing this stop motion in a simpler style to Ian Waldie stop motions.
He has a very controlled stop-motion photography style. I am going to take the use of the still camera on a tripod contrasted
with the movement of people or workers to show the passing of time in stop motion.

3. Artist Precedents
Jack Evens
This photo from artist Jack Evens is inspiration for a gradient of cupcake batter
through time to a burnt cupcake. The time shown in this image is subtle and I
think the process that is taken in making the flowers would be very affective adapt-
ed to the making of cupcakes. My idea is to show the cupcake at 5min intervals.
Sophie Calle
The images of ‘The Chromatic Diet’. For six days Calle consumed a diet of a single
food colour.
Calle asked writer and filmmaker Paul Auster to “invent a fictive character which
I would attempt to resemble.” This charactor also served as the model for Maria in
Auster’s novel Leviathan (1992). This charactor intrigued Calle that she re-created the
charactors week and displayed it as works of art created. Auster had Maria consumme
a chromatic diet which includeds a series of color-coordinated meals.
From this series of work I am taking inspiration from the colour. I would like to show
and use different colours through the baking to show the passing of time, e.g. light –
not cooked to burnt – over cooked.

9. Evaluation
From last project I knew that I needed to have a clear set idea before i started taking photos. One thing that I think was
successful in this project was that I defiantly had a clear idea in my mind of how I wanted to show and express time in my
photos. This helped mw greatly as I did not waste time like I did last project on decisions that should have already been
made. My first photo shoot went well and from this I knew that I could continue with my idea of showing time through
baking. My next shoot also went successfully, it was a nice sunny day and the white balance and colours came out very
nicely.
After taking a series of photos that was intended to be turned into a stop-motion (third-shoot) I found that this did not fit
with the idea in my head of subtle time. I disliked the blatant showing of time, this made the decision that I would be of
showing a series of photos for my project.
I found the setting of white balance in my kitchen to be very hard. I struggled with this right through the project and in
the end still did not manage to correctly set the balance. When shooting I thought that the balance was almost perfect and
would need little adjustment in Photoshop, as the images when previewed on the camera screen look quite good. I was
then very disappointed at the final two photo-shoot images when I viewed then on a computer screen as the images turned
out to be very different to what they should have been.
If I were to do anything differently I would spend a lot more time correctly setting the white balance and sourcing the cor-
rect lighting.