Wow, I love My Kitchen Rules (MKR), what a great TV show, and it's not like other cooking shows at all. It has the tension and unpredictability of competition but with I think, more personality, the personality of the contestants who cook as teams of two. Friends, couples,
lovers (well that might be over..) family. The two people who work as a team, are of course always interesting self-made pairings. This certainly adds to the wide range of emotions, character and of course cooking styles. The judges on this show have something special too; or something different to judges I have seen on other cooking shows; so all round a unique cooking cook-off experience!
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However I had never actually watched this show before that day my phone would not stop ringing.
Me, "Hello" Them, "Nikki Spehar, have you got any pictures of the model Nikki Spehar?" "Who else has called you" "have you sold them already" "
We saw some on your blog".
That very night, my partner and I started watching the MKR episodes online, Nikki "I'm a model" and her hair flicks and thought the show, and Nikki were fabulous! Sadly Nikki and her friend from Uni did not make it through to the second round - I put it down to doing the hash browns in the sandwich toaster (great idea) without giving it a good clean first and no-doubt having added an unwanted toasted-cheesy flavour!!!
Never mind by now we were addicted to the show and there were plenty more teams including Drasko and his partner who made the move to Sydney. The "
Gourmet Pommies" Will and Steve who as we all now know took the MKR Crown in an as-always nail-biting finale! Well although I try not to, sometimes I get a bit celebrity stuck and my partner Vivienne had become a
HUGE fan, in particular of the judge Colin Fassnidge who has a bistro restaurant at the Four in Hand in Paddington, Sydney, where we knew Drasko was now cooking. So after an at art opening at Roslyn Oxley9 it was a brief hop on a cold night to Colin's "gastropub" where we did actually get to meet Drasko and grabed a photo op too!
But the golden moment was yet to come. At the
Sperry Odysseys Await launch party we finally met MKR winners Will and Steve and had a great chat with them about the show, life after MKR, their future plans, and their ears certainly pricked up when Vivienne let on that I had created Nikki's shots for her modelling portfolio. Yes those pictures, in Womans Day, The Daily Mirror and so on, and I promptly gave them one of my big picture business cards with, you guessed it, Nikki's picture on it!
So while a competition like MKR has a clear winner at the end. Life and
photography are often not that clear cut; and winning is not the end, but actually a new beginning. But there are many things we can learn from a creative cooking competition like MKR that apply to photography too.
- It pays to be organised.
- Experience can give you a HUGE advantage and it will help you to avoid; cracking under pressure, which is when the mistakes start to happen, potentially ruining everything.
- Creativity is essential, but what you do with it actually has to work. (see experience)
- Teamwork and an ability to work toward a common Vision are indispensable.
- Persistence is crucial if you want to go all the way.
And at the end of it all, it really does help that you LOVE what you do and have FUN doing it; and that's how I like things to go on my photo shoots, love, creativity, teamwork, persistence, and not at all last of all, fun! Yes you need to enjoy yourself when you work, I know I do.
Kent Johnson, Sydney, Australia.
0433 796 863
