I feel it best to hold off on the full description of the shoot and it's content until I have the photos ready to put up.
In the meantime I'd like to discuss the prep for the shoot. I spent a little bit over $100 on snacks, treats and desserts.
Unfortunately, I left the shopping to the very last minute and had to rush around a bit. This did not compromise my selection, but it did compromise my really being able to savor the experience of spending $100 on pure junk food.
Truth be told, I was somewhat anxious about the process of buying so much snacks. When it comes to shopping for snacks, it is always best to be impulsive. Often, I will anticipate something very specific less than 3 hours ahead of time. Any more time than this you really cannot accurately gauge what you will we be in the mood for when it is time. Any attempt that I have made to pre-empt what I really want too far ahead of time has almost always spoiled the eating experience for me. This, for the most part, holds true for meals as well. So going shopping for about a month or two's snacks in advance was a bit disorienting for me. I did not doubt that I could do it, rather I knew I would have to overcome some sort of mental obstacle in order to execute the shopping experience. I ended up hitting up 2 grocery stores and 4 convenience stores.
I only gave myself two simple rules:
1. Only buy stuff that I KNOW I like and that I know that I will eat. I was not going to spend $100 on props. Everything I bought has value to me and has history with me.
2. Try to buy as much of a variety of snacks as possible.
Number two is pretty obvious. A larger range of labels will make for a more interesting picture. Practically, a more diverse range of snacks will not feel like a responsibility in the coming month or two when I eat all of these snacks. I won't get bored or tired of eating the same thing.
Nonetheless, the huge sack of treats that now sits in my room does have a bit of an intimidating presence. My approach has been to not think about it. The enormous bag of snacks is there. It is not going anywhere. I do not have to eat something every chance I get. (Everything is pretty much packaged so I also don't have to worry about anything going bad.) My feeling is that I will pick at it whenever I feel like it, and within a week I will have forgotten most of the stuff that I bought, leading to some pleasant surprises and internal self-congratulatory thoughts for being smart enough to have picked up such and such item.
Another point of anxiety was that I was not going to get enough for the shoot. I was worried that I would hold too tightly to the variety rule, and end up not getting enough sheer visual quantity to make the photos effective. One hundred dollars worth of treats looked a lot smaller than I thought it would have. Fortunately I pretty much got JUST enough to make one of the shots look just about right.
Onto this weekend's actual consumption:
It was a pretty slow weekend for me. I had no appetite on Friday night, and I went out on Saturday night. Sunday night I had dinner with my sister's family over at my aunt and uncle's house. My aunt and uncle made an awesome dinner and brought out some brownies engineered to retard the ability to move one's body. They had chocolate frosting on them as well, something that I really don't see often enough on brownies. Add to that a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream and I felt that I had made up for the weekend's drought. At the end of the night my aunt sent me home with some food and about 1/3 of a plate of the brownies. Also, my sister gave me a bag full of my Christmas stocking candy that I had left at my parent's house and that my parent's had brought up and left with my sister. Carrying that stuff back home to be greeted by the garbage bag full of junk food, I felt a rising sense of pressure inside me....
One specific highlight of the weekend I have to mention is the acquisition of a handful of Little Hug juice drinks. These have gone by many names. When I was a kid the corner store stocked "Teenis", which is pretty much the exact same product. They are the tiny, clear plastic, kool-aid type drinks that come in a container that resembles a mini barrel or jug. The tops are sealed with foil on which the only type is found. The classic move for these bad boys was to bite into the foil with your teeth and immediately begin sucking the juice out. As a wee-lad, the pro technique was to bite down and immediately suck the entire contents out in one motion, imploding the cheap plastic container. They come in like ten different flavors and all are pretty decent. Amazingly, these drinks seem to be inflation proof. When I was REALLY little, I believe I first got them for like 15 cents or something. Not soon after, they were selling for a quarter. I didn't check the price last weekend, but I did get six for a dollar at the same store about 9 months ago. You GOTTA love that.
Little Hugs in all it's simplistic glory.
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