From Behind the Lens to "Puck It!"

How Bella’s Christmas cocoa bombs, a couple of old artistic influences, and my ADHD brain somehow turned into a full-blown cake puck obsession.

Erin Hesser | September 6, 2026

National Bakery Day is celebrated annually on September 25 to celebrate local and independent bakeries!  Just say "Puck It!" to your diet and support small businesses with a sweet treat!

I should probably know by now that when I say,

“I just want to experiment with something,”

There is a very real possibility that within a few days I will have purchased specialized supplies, taken over a significant portion of the house, created a dozen variations of the original idea, and be lying awake at night thinking about what I could try next. This is the way my ADHD brain works. I find a thread, I tug on it, and suddenly I have unraveled the entire sweater. Hyper-fixation is probably the more accurate term, but in the beginning it always feels completely reasonable. I think I’m just curious, I’m just experimenting, I’m just going to try one thing, and then, somehow, there are molds...So many molds. 

To back up a bit, though, this particular rabbit hole started with photography.

For years, so much of what has interested me photographically has been rooted in vernacular photography, the everyday photographs that capture people as they actually lived. The spaces between the posed photographs. The accidental details. The moments no one necessarily thought were important when they happened, but that somehow become precious later.

A hand resting on a shoulder. Someone laughing just outside the frame. The way a room looked. The clothes we wore. The things sitting on the kitchen counter. The evidence of ordinary life. I love photographs that become important because time makes them important. Lately, though, I have found myself fascinated by something exactly opposite.

Stillness. Controlled light. Composition. Objects carefully placed rather than moments accidentally caught. Dessert photography! In some ways it feels like moving from vernacular photography into still life art. Nothing is happening. And yet everything matters. The direction of the light. The texture of the chocolate. The crumbs. The shadows. The angle of a cut edge. The shine of a drizzle. The tiny imperfections that suddenly become interesting when viewed through a lens. With people, I am often waiting for the moment to happen. With food, I get to build the moment. And that has been an entirely different kind of creative challenge.

Which raises an interesting question. When I make something specifically because I want to photograph it, what is actually the finished product?

Is it the dessert? Or is it the photograph? I’m still not entirely sure.

Sometimes I find myself spending more time thinking about what the inside of something will look like when it is cut open than how it will actually taste. That sounds slightly alarming when written down. But visually, food is fascinating. A smooth chocolate shell cracks open to reveal cake, filling, texture, and color. Suddenly something that looked simple from the outside becomes layered and complicated. It is almost architectural. And when the light hits it correctly, it becomes something entirely different from “a dessert sitting on a plate.” It becomes a still life. Something constructed. Something temporary. Something made, photographed, and then eaten, which is strangely beautiful when you think about it. Unlike most artwork, eventually someone gets to eat this one.

Enter Bella and her Cocoa Bombs. The other piece of this story belongs to Bella. For the past several Christmases, Bella has made cocoa bombs for her friends. They were the perfect gift. Homemade, cute, personal, festive, and just complicated enough to feel special without requiring us to start an actual chocolate factory in the kitchen. Although, in retrospect, that may have simply been foreshadowing.

Last week we started talking about what she might do instead. Not because there is anything wrong with cocoa bombs. But after several years, Bella’s friends have been thoroughly cocoa-bombed. It felt like time for something new. So I started thinking about alternatives. And because my brain was already wandering around in the world of dessert photography, I naturally began looking at desserts differently. Not just:

Would this taste good? But: Would this photograph well? Could I decorate it differently? What would happen if I cut it open? What textures could I layer? How does it look from a worm's-eye view? What about a bird's-eye view?

Somewhere in that process, cake pucks appeared. At first, they were simply another possible Christmas gift idea. Cute, compact. Easy to customize. A logical successor to Bella’s cocoa bombs. That was the theory. The reality was that my ADHD brain looked at a cake puck and apparently said:

Excellent. We shall now make this our entire personality. 

Except maybe this didn’t come out of nowhere. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that none of this is actually as random as it initially seemed. Long before cake pucks took over my kitchen counters, I was teaching art and photography students about artists whose work asked some of these exact same questions. Two of my favorites to build lessons around were Wayne Thiebaud and David Levinthal.

Thiebaud, of course, made cakes, pies, candies, and other ordinary sweets monumental through paint, repetition, color, thick surfaces, and careful arrangement, turning bakery-counter objects into unmistakable still lifes. (SFMOMA)

I loved teaching his work.

There was something wonderfully accessible about beginning a lesson with cake. Students didn’t have to be convinced that the subject was interesting. But then we could start digging deeper. Why does repetition change the way we see an object? What happens when something ordinary is isolated and presented as important? How do color and composition transform a piece of cake into a work of art? And, maybe most importantly, who gets to decide that a subject is worthy of art in the first place Apparently somewhere in the back of my brain, those lessons have been sitting quietly for years waiting for me to coat some cake in chocolate. Then there was David Levinthal.

Levinthal builds miniature scenes using toys and figures and then photographs them in a way that transforms those little objects into something cinematic, ambiguous and strangely believable. He has worked with toy figures and constructed tableaux for decades, using photography to turn obviously manufactured objects into images that feel loaded with narrative. (Smithsonian American Art Museum)

His work fascinated me as a teacher because the object itself wasn’t really the final artwork. The photograph was. The toy was the raw material. The scene was constructed for the lens. And suddenly that question I keep asking myself about these cake pucks feels very familiar.

Is the puck the artwork?

Or is the puck something I am building so that I can make the photograph? Maybe that idea has been sitting dormant in my brain far longer than I realized.

Dormant Creativity Is Still Creativity

I think sometimes we assume that when we return to an idea after years away from it, we’re starting over. Maybe we’re not. Maybe creativity doesn’t disappear. Maybe it just gets tucked away. Stored.

Layered underneath work and parenting and responsibilities and all the other things that fill a life. And then one day something bumps into it. Bella’s cocoa bombs. A curiosity about dessert photography. A cake puck mold. And suddenly an old part of your brain wakes up and says:

Oh. I remember this.

I remember thinking about still lifes. I remember constructing images. I remember talking about Thiebaud’s cakes. I remember studying the way Levinthal could take a small object, control its environment, and completely change what it became through a camera. Apparently those ideas have been hanging around in my head this entire time.

They were just waiting for chocolate. And then there is the danger of giving my brain a project with infinite variables. There is no natural stopping point. Each finished idea immediately produces three more. Before long, I am no longer simply testing a possible Christmas gift for Bella’s friends. I am developing flavors. Wondering around the junk food aisle of the gas station, thinking, what can I smash together with Twinkies to create a decadent puck... and then could I sprinkle salt and vinegar chips on top to let the salt bring out the sweetness... Needless to say, I ate the bag of salt and vinegar chips on the way home!

There is a very specific kind of excitement that happens when my brain locks onto something new. It is part creativity, part curiosity, part compulsion. Everything suddenly feels connected. A photography idea becomes a dessert idea. A dessert idea becomes a design idea. A design idea becomes a packaging idea. And somewhere along the way I realize that what began as “I wonder if this would be fun to photograph” has somehow become a project with a name.

Puck It!

And honestly, the name fits. Because there is something wonderfully freeing about reaching a point in a creative experiment where you stop overthinking whether it makes sense and simply decide to run with it. Not to mention, I am at a point in my life where I have less "Pucks" to give about perfection, and more interest in the process than the outcomes.

So, I say, Puck it. Try it. Make it. Photograph it. See what happens.

That is more or less how Puck It! Cake Pucks came into existence. Not through a carefully mapped-out business plan. Not because I had spent years dreaming of entering the cake puck industry. And certainly not because I needed another hobby. It happened because Bella needed a new idea for Christmas gifts. I had been exploring dessert photography. My brain connected the two. Wayne Thiebaud and David Levinthal had apparently been hiding in a dusty filing cabinet somewhere in the creative part of my brain. And then my hyper-fixation took the wheel.

And then there is the Photograph, the idea that in the end, the only thing that remains is the photograph, is the best part!  It's the documentarian in me that finds this so satisfying. Maybe that answers my question. Maybe the cake puck is the subject. And the photograph is the finished piece. Or maybe I don’t actually need to choose.

Maybe making the thing and photographing the thing are simply two halves of the same creative act. One gets eaten. One gets remembered. There Is Just One Small Problem. My creative brain has been very busy. Which means my refrigerator now contains the consequences of my artistic exploration. A lot of consequences. Now I have all of these cake pucks that somebody needs to eat.

So…

Who’s up for some Pucking delicious treats?!

Dialing Into the Past: National Phone Day and the Art of Noticing

Erin Hesser | April 25, 2026

National Telephone Day is celebrated annually on April 25 to honor the invention of the telephone and its transformative impact on global communication

April 25th is National Phone Day, which feels appropriate because lately I’ve been feeling extremely aware of the passage of time, and not just because my phone keeps auto-suggesting reading glasses ads. Phones have been with us through everything. First loves. First jobs. First song ringtones (the early days when the ringer was always on, and had a different song assigned to every family member), and of course, who could forget the first times realizing I was definitely not on mute. They’ve evolved from clunky wall-mounted beasts with tangled cords into sleek little rectangles that now track our steps, sleep, and emotional well-being (sometimes aggressively). And yet, nothing makes you feel older faster than watching a child encounter technology from your childhood, which brings me to a recent outing with my daughter.

We were in an eclectic shop poking around after seeing the Ballet West in downtown SLC. It was one of those charming spaces that leans hard into nostalgia, when we spotted it... standing tall and proud as if it were a Claes Oldenburg art installation. An old pay phone. Receiver. Cord. Coin slot. No explanatory plaque, no velvet rope. Just… there. Like a discovered relic. My daughter stopped, stared, and said with unmistakable pride,

“I know what that is!

She said it the way museum guides identify artifacts recovered from the pyramids of Egypt. Not curiosity, authority. “It’s an old phone,” she explained. “People used those before cell phones.”  My inner dialogue said, "That's right, people, like your old mom, back in the 20th Century!" She was talking about me and didn’t even notice.  It was hilarious, and the giggles erupted.

I watched her pick up the receiver: the weight, the shape, the mystery of a phone that didn’t live in your pocket. And in that split second, I felt it, that familiar, fleeting nudge that says this is something. Not a big moment. Not a milestone. Just a beautifully ordinary intersection of past and present.

That’s the sweet spot of vernacular photography.

These are the moments that don’t announce themselves. The ones that happen between errands. Inside shops. In passing sentences that would be easy to forget, but somehow stick. They’re wonderfully candid, but they still deserve intention. Because capturing the moment isn’t the same thing as capturing it well.

Vernacular photography works best when it lives in that in‑between space: half candid, half orchestrated. You don’t stop the world, but you might shift your feet. You don’t overly pose the subject, but you notice the perspective. You let the moment stay real, while quietly asking: Where should I stand for this? What matters in the frame?

That pay phone didn’t need staging. But the angle mattered. Shooting slightly lower than my daughter, who towers over me, gives the phone a sense of life, appropriate for a proud child identifying ancient history. A shallow depth of field keeps the background quiet, letting her expression do the talking. Focus lands somewhere between the object and the observer, because really, the story lives in the relationship between the two. Purpose doesn’t mean stiffness. It means awareness. Capturing the look on her face as she played make-believe… it was truly the exact expression on my face every time I had to call collect!

It’s choosing not to bulldoze the moment with instructions, but also not to phone it in (pun unavoidable). It’s letting the candid unfold, while still being intentional about light, framing, and focus. The result feels effortless, even though it isn’t careless. On National Phone Day, I’ll do what we all do: reach for my phone before my feet hit the floor, use it to organize my day, and rely on it for approximately everything. But I’ll also think about that pay phone in that vintage shop, and my daughter, proudly recognizing it like a triumph of historical literacy.

Moments like that are easy to miss. Easier still to capture without meaning.

The real magic is stopping just long enough to recognize them, and then making the image purposeful without making it precious. Let it breathe. Let it stay human. And let it quietly tell the story of how fast everything changes… and how beautifully we notice, when we choose to.

Evolution of the Telephone

• 1876: First successful telephone call by Bell.

• 1878: First telephone exchange opens.

• 1915: First coast-to-coast U.S. call.

• 1983: First mobile phone (Motorola DynaTAC) launched.

• 1995: My first pager

• 1994: IBM Simon — first smartphone.

• 2002: My first cell phone

• 2007: Apple introduces the iPhone, integrating calling with computing and multimedia

• 2010: My first iPhone, AKA tiny pocket computer

• 2026: The moment my 16-year-old daughter came face-to-face with a real live pay phone, and the hilarity of trying to explain how collect calls worked!

Elevating Vernacular Photography...

Erin Hesser | March 25, 2026

Reflections: 1991 | In Honor of My Father, Today, On His 80th Birthday.

There’s a photograph I return to often, two girls balanced on an old stone bridge in the English countryside, caught between those years of childhood and becoming teenagers. The hills roll endlessly behind them, soft and green, like a painting that was never meant to end. One of those girls is me. The other is my sister. What you don’t see in the frame is the person who made that moment possible, my dad, standing just a few feet away, his well-worn and heavy-as-heck Nikon camera lifted to his eye.

My dad rarely vacationed without that camera. It was as much a part of him as the way he’d pause to take in a view just a little longer than everyone else. Not just on vacations and birthdays... but even if it didn’t seem to matter, he was there documenting it. Not in a staged, “everyone smiles” kind of way, but in the in-between moments.

As a kid, I didn’t fully get it. I just knew he was always watching, not in a distant way, but in a deeply present one. He saw things. He saw us. And somehow, through that lens, he taught me to see too.

That photo on the bridge is a perfect example. It isn’t posed in the traditional sense. We’re not lined up or polished. No coordinated, or preplanned matching outfits with monochromatic fashion-conscious color scheme. My sister’s stance is casual, mine is a little uncertain. There’s movement, imperfection, life. And yet, it feels composed, balanced in a way that makes the ordinary feel intentional. That was my dad’s gift: turning everyday moments into something quietly profound.

He never called it “art.” To him, it was just taking pictures. But over time, I realized he was doing something more. He was elevating vernacular photography, the kind that lives in family albums and shoeboxes, into something closer to fine art. Not because of loads of expensive lighting or elaborate setups, but because of attention, patience, and heart.

He taught me that the best photographs aren’t forced; they’re noticed. They’re felt before they’re taken.

As I grew older and picked up a camera of my own, I found myself chasing that same feeling. Not perfection, but truth. Not spectacle, but softness. I started to understand that photography isn’t just about capturing what something or someone looks like; it’s about honoring what it felt like to be there.

Worm’s Eye View vs. Low‑Angle View in Pet Photography: Why the Difference Matters

Erin Hesser | February 20, 2026

National "Love Your Pet Day"

When photographing pets, most people instinctively shoot from above, the classic “human looking down” perspective. But the magic often happens when you flip that instinct upside down and get low. Really low. Two techniques that can transform your pet pics are the low‑angle view and the worm’s eye view. While they’re related, they’re not the same, and understanding the difference can dramatically change the mood, emotion, and storytelling power of your images. Let’s break it down.

Both angles look upward, but the degree of “upward” is what sets them apart.. A low‑angle shot says, “Look at this amazing pet.” A worm’s eye view says, “Behold this legendary creature.”

What Is a Low‑Angle View?

A low‑angle view is taken from below the subject’s eye line, but not necessarily from the ground. Think of kneeling, crouching, or sitting at a low height. You’re still looking upward, but you’re not flat on the floor.

A low‑angle view is perfect for:

• Making pets look confident or heroic

• Emphasizing stature or presence

• Creating a sense of importance without distortion

• Adding drama while keeping proportions natural

In pet photography, this angle is especially great for dogs who love to pose, cats perched on furniture, or any animal that benefits from a little extra “wow” factor

What Is a Worm’s Eye View?

A worm’s eye view takes the concept of “low” to the extreme. This perspective is shot from ground level, as if you were a tiny creature looking up at the world. The camera is often placed directly on the floor, sometimes even angled sharply upward.

This technique:

• Makes pets appear massive, powerful, or larger‑than‑life

• Creates a sense of awe or whimsy

• Exaggerates height and form

• Adds a playful, surreal, or even epic quality to the image

In pet photography, a worm’s eye view can turn a small dog into a towering hero, a cat into a majestic creature, or a rabbit into a mythical forest guardian. It’s dramatic, bold, and incredibly fun.

Why You Should Use Both

Pets live close to the ground, literally. Shooting from their world creates intimacy, connection, and authenticity. But choosing between a low angle and a worm’s eye view lets you shape the story:

• Want your pet to look noble? Try a low angle.

• Want them to look epic, whimsical, or hilariously powerful? Go full worm’s eye.

• Want variety in your gallery? Mix both.

These perspectives also help you avoid the “same old pet photos” that everyone takes from above. Instead, you’re creating images that feel intentional, artistic, and emotionally rich.

Final Thoughts

Experimenting with camera height can completely transform your images. A low‑angle view adds strength and presence, while a worm’s eye view adds drama and wonder. Both perspectives invite viewers into a world where animals aren’t just subjects — they’re characters with personality, power, and story.