Welcome to Baking Priority! The blog that combines my two hobbies: baking and photography!
Photography
I’ve never been good at anything creative or artsy. Growing up, people had trouble identifying even stick figures that I would attempt to draw. Any other art tool was wasted on me as well. However, I’ve always been intrigued by photography, and remember my first camera: a Fujica DL-100 35mm film camera. I still have it!
My aunt called me one day before my birthday when I was in high school. She asked me, as she did every year, whether I would like cash or a surprise gift. For some reason, that year I chose a gift over cash and was gifted a 3.2MP Konica Minolta DiMAGE x31. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world and shot with it for a couple of years. I used full auto mode with only a digital zoom, thinking that my pictures were awesome! 20/20 hindsight, right?
In graduate school, I decided to up my photography game a bit and started shooting with… my cell phone! It was really the continual upgrades in cell phone camera technology which rekindled my interest in photography, as I got the opportunity to mess around with manual settings. However, being in grad school, there was rarely time that I could spend away from the lab to really explore the outdoors and hone my photography skills.
I decided to treat myself to my first DSLR camera after I finished my Ph.D and that’s when this blog was born! I’ve been listening to many photography-related podcasts and have read many articles on technique and am really looking forward to growing as a hobbyist photographer and improving!
Baking
I’ve baked on and off for over a decade, but never really ventured out of my comfort zone (yay oatmeal cookies and brownies!) until grad school. Every grad student needs some sort of outlet, right? Macarons, hand pies, and custards started coming out of the kitchen, and after graduating I decided to venture out of my comfort zone and started baking bread and creating my own recipes. My goal for baking is to make things that people can eat without feeling too guilty! I’ve gotta credit the Great British Bake Off for kindling this fire.
When I’m not baking or taking photographs, I’m usually trying new restaurants, playing some sort of game, taking care of Pondtopia (my backyard pond), gardening, or watching hockey (let’s go Ducks!).
Anyway, thanks for stopping by and checking out the blog! Hopefully you can stick around and join me on my journey in improving on my photography and baking. Feel free to post comments/advice/questions wherever you like!
– Matt