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Whatsup Not-so-ordinary Hivers!
I don't know about you, but I love spending time in the kitchen. When I cook elsewhere, my mind always hopes that there aren't dull knives around. Sharp knives are a must-have in the kitchen if you'd ask me. My mother, for example, has had these very dull knives in her kitchen, which always triggered me a bit whenever I cooked a meal for her and my stepfather. The 6th object is about knives, which shouldn't be missing when I'm taking part in [the not-so-ordinary ordinary items challenge](https://peakd.com/challenge/@rubencress/the-not-so-ordinary-ordinary-item-challenge-30-days). 
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### Sharp knives equal safe time
This headline probably will give me the chance to dive into a rabbit hole regarding efficiency. I'll try to resist. Having sharp knives in your kitchen will bring you so much joy when using them. Especially if you consider that we spend a lot of time in our lives in the kitchen cooking and preparing meals for today, or tomorrow. 

Dull knives cost me a lot of patience and time. It just works like garbage, and I can't easily cut through meat or whatever I'm cutting. I even have a risk to cut myself (which happened a few times in my mom's kitchen) due to the blade being too dull. A slippery slope straight into my fingers. Yay. I don't want to express how much time we would save in the entirety of our lives using sharper knives: consider this: on average we cook 2 times a day, that's 730 times. If you would save only 2 seconds (which is in reality just a fraction of what you would save) you will save 24 minutes in one year. Let's say we start cooking at the age of 18 and we stop at the age of 70 you'd save 21 hours.

_at this moment, Ruben realizes he's a friggin' maximalist_

Fuck, I'm a maxi.
But I'll stop right there. <sub>21 hours is equal to</sub><sub><sub> ~ 2 Season's of an average Netflix show</sub></sub><sub><sub><sub>for using proper knives.</sub></sub></sub><sub><sub><sub> <sub>And if you think about it, you could save so much time with so many other things. We even pay for wasting our time by watching mediocre Netflix shows.</sub></sub></sub></sub> <sub><sub><sub><sub><sub>This rant is even like, me secretly typing some stuff in my blog post, knowing -someone- will copy/paste this to read. What are you still reading for? You're wasting your time, go to the next paragraph!</sub></sub></sub></sub></sub>

But yes, time is the most precious thing we have. 
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### Get yourself a bit of happiness
If you are the type of person who enjoys cooking, I promise you; with the right tools, you will make your kitchen an amusement park. Even if you don't like to cook, you should get the right tools (so you can get tf out of there even faster (which probably will make you happier eh?)).

Just with anything that we buy, whatever it is that we buy; we want it to work. And if something works well, we'll get that shot of dopamine. Especially if 'we' used it properly (or as expected). Functional objects serve a specific purpose. For knives, it is a rather simple one. To cut. I never gave it much thought, special knives to cut meat, special knives to cut veggies, and special knives to cut bread. But the logic behind it is maybe pretty fast-forwarded. My brain tells me; it's just like having a lot of sneakers, the more you have, the lesser they get destroyed since you spread the use. This should also work with knives eh? Or anything else. 


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![](https://i.imgur.com/xCw1KLw.jpg)
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![](https://i.imgur.com/nCpMI27.jpg)
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### The creative process
For this object, I wanted to make a lifestyle-orientated shot. Because; knives are life. I wanted to show the design of the block for the knives. I created an easy-to-process environment that wouldn't cost a loss of focus on the knife. I used a similar technique that I used for the spoon, but I wanted a slightly harsher reflection light. I did this by setting up the light source more parallel to the knife, instead of at a tilted angle, which would give me a much smoother look. The reason why I did this, is that 'knives' in general is a 'harder' word than silverware. To finish things up, I added another artificial light source that is giving the feeling as if the setting was shot during a Sunset, right before dinner. The first word that pops up when I look at the photograph is _cooking_.
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### Technical details
<sub>
  <table>
  <tr>
    <td><b><sub>Camera</sub></b></td>
    <td><sub>Sony A7 MARK II</sub></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td><b><sub>Lens</sub></b></td>
    <td><sub>Sigma 105mm f/2.8</sub></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td><b><sub>Shutterspeed</sub></b></td>
    <td><sub>1/15</sub></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td><b><sub>Aperture</sub></b></td>
    <td><sub>f/5.0</sub></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td><b><sub>ISO</sub></b></td>
    <td><sub>80</sub></td>
  </tr>
  </table>
 </sub>

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### About the challenge
<sub>Photograph and write a little bit about 30 ordinary items that I used a lot in 2022. You can read more about the challenge, and join yourself <a href="https://peakd.com/challenge/@rubencress/the-not-so-ordinary-ordinary-item-challenge-30-days">here</a>. This challenge is just a little experiment.</sub>
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### Stab properly, use sharp high-quality knives!
Damn, I'm only at the 6th object, and I can already tell I care a lot about the quality and how durable the products are. For almost everything my mind is telling me; buy durable, high-quality, and save time. Interesting... and revealing on how I live my life. 

Cheers,
Ruben