I recently spent the day with Christina Miller. She’s the owner of a local business here in Abilene Texas called Cookie Capers. She bakes some totally delicious cookies from scratch right in her kitchen. I was able to taste a few different types of her cookies that her customers keep coming back for. It’s never a bad gig when you get to eat cookies on the job.

I’ve been admiring gorgeous lifestyles images that tell you a story without needing the words for years. I love how you can find the right angles and lighting to capture even the most mundane task in a beautiful way. Baking is already a beautiful thing so I knew capturing more than just the cookies themselves would be so much fun. When Christina came to me about this session, I was instantly excited.

I wanted to document Christina baking a batch of her cookies from start to finish. From measuring out the ingredients to pulling the cookies from the oven. She decided she would go with a classic, chocolate chip. As I said before, they’re my favorite, so there were no complaints from me.

Since this was my first time shooting something like this, I went into it with ideas of how I wanted things to look. I brought my lights with me to Christina’s house just in case there wasn’t enough natural lighting. Thankfully, I didn’t need to set them up. Of course, it’s still better to be safe than sorry. I’ve learned starting out with test shots from different angles saves you a lot of time. I even tried turning the kitchen lights off to see if there was enough light coming in from the windows alone. Sadly, that didn’t work out, but the test shots really helped me get started.

Lifestyle is such a cool style of photography but it’s very different from portraits that are often taken in perfect even lighting with a subject you are posing. Even if there’s movement in the photos it can usually be repeated. With baking I can’t very well ask her to add more flour because I didn’t get it the first time. Gotta be on top of your game.

Before I’d arrived, she made a few other recipes so that I could get some pictures of those too. Peanut butter, chocolate crinkles, and cookies & cream. It was fun photographing all the best angles of those delicious little things.

Have any ideas for other photography adventures I should take? Leave me a comment below. If you enjoy seeing what kinds of fun things I’m getting up to in these blog posts, go follow me on my Facebook and Instagram under LeDawn Marie Photography or there are some buttons at the bottom of the page that’ll take you straight over.