Food Editorial Photography

Here’s one of my favourite shot from a recent editorial job for an overseas magazine…

Location: Singapore Lau Pa Sat

Some of the challenges I faced in this job were:

1. Making hawker food look like recipe shots using minimum setup

2. Bringing out the essence of food culture in Singapore and Malaysia especially among the Chinese

3. Eating 3 bowls of assam laksa, 2 bowls of curry laksa, 2 plates of char kway teow, 1 chicken rice, 1 “sang ha mee”, and all the rest which I can’t remember… ALL in one day… I have a super tight deadline to meet… (Yes, I hate to waste food, so I made my 2 assistants eat with me after each shoot)

4. Finding public toilets to purge

5. Shooting professional-looking profile pictures of famous chefs on location at a fast pace with minimum setup

All in all, I enjoyed it so much that a part of me deep inside didn’t wish it would end… Hahaha…

I had to be a portrait-documentary-food-photographer all at one go! Hmm… so yummy! Visit me and we go makan!

Studio Portrait . 291010

From the Archives:

As I look through my archives, I find more and more of my past works “unacceptable”. I think I have grown much more fussy and picky and difficult to live with. LOL…

Street Shot – 2 Umbrellas and 2 Men

2 Umbrellas and 2 Men

2 Umbrellas and 2 Men

Event Shootout with Olympus PEN E-P1

It’s great joy and excitement to shoot with my friend Louis for a Big Nokia Event recently that I just can’t help, but to share some of the images from the Olympus E-P1 I was using.

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The following are telephoto shots taken with a Leica 90mm F2.8 lens fitted on the E-P1 via an adaptor, and due to the 2x crop factor, it achieves a fantastic whooping 180mm! Due to that, I didn’t have to fight with the professional journalists using Huge Canon and Nikon bodies and lenses (also don’t have to fight with Louis who was using a powerful Canon 70-200mm F2.8 Lens), and still reasonably achieved close-up shots of the speakers on stage! The manual focusing on the sharp E-P1 screen made things possible.

Big Nokia Boss

Nokia Boss

Chief Designer of Nokia

Chief Designer of Nokia

Close-up during a coffee table dialogue session

Close-up during a coffee table dialogue session

Chief Designer giving a talk

Chief Designer giving a talk

Oh man… I was being twittered! I should really start twitting soon!

A Large 60-in LCD Screen connected to a laptop on twitter

A Large 60-in LCD Screen connected to a laptop on twitter

Some new products… …

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Alysha’s Birthday Party

Blessed Birthday Alysha! For an interesting video by Eddie, click here.

“Destitute, but I still have a cigarette today.”

destitute

Litter Bug, Litter Truck and the Unsung Heroes

Litter Bugs' Doing - Common scene in Malaysia

Photographed with a toy camera. Litter Bugs' Doing - Common scene in Malaysia

Cleaners who start work while we are sleeping, cleaning up our rubbish

Cleaners who start work while we are sleeping, cleaning up our rubbish

LET US ALL APPRECIATE THEM! Before we conveniently drop a tissue or throw some used parking ticket on the floor, let us remember the unsung heroes who wake up before the sun rises each day, cleaning up our rubbish. Let’s be reminded to have some self-respect, and remember our basic social responsibilities.

Rushing Home

There’s no place better than home. Let us all remember the many homeless out there each day when we are travelling comfortably in our air-conditioned car. At the end of each passing day, it’s good to have some time to yourself, quiet and alone. Sometimes we work so hard for what we’re after and pass it without realizing it.

sunset1

Rafferty Boy

A very cute boy

A very cute boy

Hope this picture cheer you guys up out there in this gloomy world – Michael Jackson died, swine flu, economy down, Malaysia’s political situation, more-and-more-”photographers” charging cheaper, nasi kandar still so expensive, sucky photographers winning awards(subjective), everything getting more expensive(except for digital SLRs), poor getting poorer, more and more babies being thrown away, homeless not fed and dying, children being sold to prostitution daily, etc, etc… never-ending human rights violations. Let’s all not forget life is not just about ourselves.

Street 12 May 2009 – Part 1

Many more hidden in my closet.. tons.. I believe I’m gonna smell fixer (since today’s stop bath is ordorless) continuously for 14 days, not to mention the color slides, digital files, etc. But, I AM LOVING IT!

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Birds flying off building

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Quiet motel entrance

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Duck specialty advertisement and menu

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Dirty fan off an old ceiling

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abstract map on the ground

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morning walk

Biggest Aircon Compressor I've ever seen

Biggest Aircon Compressors I've ever seen

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View of a food stall's kitchen

Man feeding pigeons

Man feeding pigeons

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Old cars still work the same. They bring you from point A to point B too.

See the man?

Stall outside temple. See the man behind?