iPhone Food Photography - RIP Steve Jobs

As a tribute to Steve Jobs, I am posting my recent favorite food pictures, all shot using my iPhone 3Gs.

Oyster burger from Burger Room, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong.


Macaron from Jean-Paul Hevin, IFC, Hong Kong.


Supermarket sweep.


Mie Sedap rasa sambel goreng with cheddar chunks


Kowloon Dairy milk and hot coffee from a neighborhood char chan teng.


Hot coffee in Black & White cup from San Chui Kei, Wanchai.


Luncheon meat and fried egg in buttered bun from neighborhood char chan teng.


Fanta at yumcha.


Typical weekend yumcha.


Grape calpis soda from random Japanese eatery.


Beef sukiyaki hotpot from random Japanese eatery.


Colorful salad from random Japanese eatery.


Taro froyo with taro mochi etc.

My iPhone and my favorite apps (Toy SLR, instagram and iDarkroom) made instant food blogging with eye candy photos possible.
iLOVE.

Having Fun with Rambutan 紅毛丹之戀

It's been a while since I really enjoyed myself playing with food photography.

I had a lot of fun playing with rambutan a few weekends back.

Let me share some of the shots with you.

Please excuse their crappy quality :D

大家鐘意紅毛丹嗎?

Have you tried rambutans before? Can you get them in your area?

食過未?聽講唔係度度有..

Their flesh is sweet and juicy with a touch of tang.

食落真係好消暑, 又甜又多汁

I love them so much!

唔知你鐘唔鐘意食, 我就好鐘意啦

All photos were taken with Canon EOS7D, I used either 50mm f/1.4 or 60mm f/2.8 macro lens.

Have a great weekend and have fun playing with/shooting your food, y'all!

全部相用Canon EOS7D影, 鏡頭係50mm f/1.4 or 60mm f/2.8 macro

大家都鐘意影相嗎?

Love - Happy Valentine's Day

It's Valentine's day.
Despite having nothing planned tonight, no fancy dinner, no carefully planned home cooked meal, not even an impromptu one...it made me think of love.

Today, SC didn't buy me no flowers, no chocolates, no branded goods, but he has done a lot to support me and my exhibitionist antics of blogging.

Normally, he's really careful with how we spend money (Regardless of whose money it is. His money, my money, is our money), but he encouraged me to get a DSLR, pushed me to upgrade to a better camera or lenses if necessary, never flinched at the expensive meals I dragged him to try (despite truly loving Cafe de Coral, Fairwood and Ajisen Ramen), taught me (a huge idiot and a slow learner) basic photoshop tricks to improve my photos, never complained about food getting cold as every dish get photographed from every possible angle, doesn't get embarrassed when I did my weird poses photographing food in public, doesn't mind being posted in my blog in various stupid poses...

...always willing to hold food in position for a longggg time while waiting for 29,876 shots to be fired...


...or hold a slurping pose...


...or hold a stretchy string of cheese off a pizza cone...


...went to dine with me despite swollen gums from recent wisdom tooth extraction...

...ordered and ate a whole fish despite his pure hatred towards anything with bones...

...joined super long queues under the rain, in humid summer heat to try "famous" eateries...


...and generally SUFFERED...a lot...

....all for me to get my money shots.

Now, all of the above, I think, is LOVE.
^_^

SC, there is no word to express my gratitude for all your support.
This blog is what it is today because of you.
Happy Valentine's Day.

Happy Chinese New Year!

The rabbit is almost here.

May the rabbit bring you health, wealth, happiness & deliciousness.

Whatever you eat, whatever you do, whatever you wear, don't forget to "document" and "share".
Just like this mad woman below, who often brought not only one, but three cameras (including the iPhone used to take this picture) to her special occasion meals.

Happy Chinese New Year!

(Crappy) Phone Food Photography

I thought it's the photographer, not the camera that makes good photographs.
Obviously, I thought a little bit too highly of myself ^_^'

So, when I went to this fantastic food-bloggers-slash-good-funny-and-nice-people dinner, hosted by Hong Kong's fabbest (is that a word?) couple, Tom & Jen, sans any of my camera, I thought I'd still be able to do Jen's delicious food some justice with my humble ol' iPhone 3Gs.

I couldn't be more wrong.

I got a little cocky, thinking...oh, I'll do a tutorial post on how to take delish looking food photos just using iPhone.

Yah, yah, that didn't go so well. The pics I took were so crappy, no amount of editing could salvage them.

So here we go, I'll just share.
So, while looking at these pics, please bear in mind that the food was actually 1,387,934.487.5 times more delicious than it looks here.

Japanese beverages brought by lovely e*ting

Jap apple juice!

Japanese kiddy beers...and gastronomous anonymous was taking their pictures using her iPhone4 (better than mine!)





They look so cute! I just had to hipstamatic them! They taste like....sweet soda ;)

Chinese preserved plum brought by @lapetitcreme


Jen's yumminesses...

Yum!


Oh yum!


Roast chicken, yum! Mexican rice and black beans, yum yum! Corn with chipotle sauce and scallion, yum yum yum!

Thanks again for a smashing night, T&J!

PS. These crappy pictures were taken using iPhone3Gs, mostly with hipstamatic app, desperately photoshopped :)

PPS. How could I forget a fellow iPhone 3Gs photo taker, you know the Jason!

Shrimp Paste Fried Rice - This Ruined My Diet & Indo Food Styling

I should really be on diet...

...trying to lose baby weight and all...

But what a carb-loving girl to do when faced by a huge plate of delicious shrimp paste fried rice? It's carb-tastic! There was a huge wok of this fried rice, and if I went all the way, I think I could really finish the whole wok myself.

But I know I shouldn't, so I just ate half a wok ^_^'

If you grew up in Indonesia, you gotta remember the typical Indonesian food styling, especially for fried rice, which is "to arrange everything in circular order". I asked my helper to put the fried rice onto a plate and I told her that I was gonna take pictures of it.

She went all out.

See? Even the chicken frank pieces and chillies are arranged into circles.

Ahhhh...it makes me miss home.

Recipe
- 3 cups of rice, ideally left in the fridge overnight (you can obviously make less, we're just greedy)
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 3 cloves of shallot, sliced thinly
- red and green chillies, chopped (adjust according to your heat tolerance)
- 3 chicken franks, sliced (you can replace this with any meat or seafood or skip it altogether)
- 3 eggs, beaten, fried and sliced (or you can mix the eggs into the fried rice instead of cooking them separately)

- shrimp paste (I used Lee Kum Kee), fish sauce, sugar, white pepper, oil

Saute garlic, shallot and chillies in hot oil until fragrant, add chicken franks, add shrimp paste (use sparingly, add bit by bit as it is a bit salty), add rice, season with a bit of fish sauce, a bit of sugar and white pepper, mix well, add sliced fried eggs, serve hot.

I wonder if pumping more milk could compensate this carb-madness afternoon?

Indonesian Hot Jasmine Tea - Still Life Food Photography Assignment

If I were still a student, I would've been punished so many times for not doing my homework. Opps. I've joined an online still life food photography club for a while, and I've missed quite a few assignments. Opps opps. This time, I managed to submit something.
Yay~!
Did you guys notice how low my expectation was?
Submitting something = a huge achievement (for me) ^_^'

I love brilliant ideas behind photographs. But most of the time, I have no idea, not even a stupid one, forget about brilliant ones.

When I do have some ideas, I mostly fail to execute them the way I wish they would turn out.
This assignment is a classic example.


I thought of using old, classic Indonesian sayings/jokes as ideas.

For the above picture, the idea came from an old Indonesian saying "Habis manis sepah dibuang" = when the sweetness is gone, the remnants get thrown out, which more or less means that once I've gotten everything I wanted out of you, I'd abandon you.

My idea was to show a used teabag in an almost empty glass of hot sweetened tea. Emphasis on "used". I wanted to desaturate the colors a little to make it less vibrant than my usual pictures. Darker, gloomier.
I've probably taken things too literally eh?

Anyway, I was happy with the idea, but look at my execution. Blah! I am not sure why, but blah.

Moving on to my next "idea"...

The idea for the above photo came from an old Indonesian joke I heard when I was young (and rather dumb).

Question: How do you know if a glass of tea is sweetened just by sight?
Answer: *thinking very hard* you can see the sugar (no, all stirred), it looks thicker, nicer, sweeter (ya ya, try identifying that by sight)...then how?
Correct answer: The sweet one has a spoon in it. HA HA HA
Answer : Grrrr (not funny!)

It's probably not funny, but that exactly how tea is served in Indonesia ^_^

So I wanted to show two glasses of hot tea (hot tea is often served in glasses, not in cups), one with a teaspoon in it, one without. Nice and simple.

But look at my execution! I forgot to stir the sugar, which pretty much ruined the joke...and since it's a happy joke, I should not have done the same desaturated, gloomy approach. A brighter, lighter, happier tones would probably be better ^_^'

Meh~ there's always another challenge, another homework...
...and I shall continue to learn.

Thank you for listening/reading my crap ^_^

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everybody!

-from my macro lens, which has been hiding in my dry box for...ever :D

Breakfast Food Photography - Need Help Selecting A Photo for Submission

I always ALWAYS have difficulties with selecting photographs to submit to events/competitions/blog postings.

I'll blame it on my trigger-happy-made-for-digital-photography fingers. I could easily take a hundred shots of one object from identical angle....sigh...thus, as expected, selecting a couple of pictures is a pain in the ass for me, not to mention, just one photograph.

I desperately need help T_T

These are pictures I shot for Still Life Fotografi group, and I can't decide which one to submit for the round up...

In this case, may I shift all the responsibilities to you? ^_^

The shot above is Working Breakfast #1
It's a coconut cream bun from local traditional bakery, simply placed on my laptop (laptop can act as a food heater too hehe), the lighting is from my living room window on the left, reflected with a white cardboard from the right. I was pretending to read the South China Morning Post online, although what I would really read should be Perez Hilton.
- Manual mode
- Aperture 3.5
- ISO 400
- Shutter speed 1/50


Working Breakfast #2
Focused more on the bun, got rid of the empty tea cup and milk bottle, replaced it with blue and white tea pot.
Same lighting and camera setup as the above shot.


TV Breakfast #1
I love eating in front of my TV. If I had my way, I'd eat all my meals while watching my favorite bad TV shows. I am trying a new setup with this shot. Back lit, no reflector, shot from further distance, same camera setup as the above.


TV Breakfast #2
Closer shot of the above setup.


TV Breakfast #3
I wanted to include a bit of my beloved TV in the shot.
Do you like the raggedy old folding stool?


Breakfast Table #1
Do I really have my breakfasts like this? Surely, no.
I've been really lazy with food styling these days, but it was weekend, so I gave it a bit more effort.
The lighting still came from living room windows, reflected from the left with white cardboard, and I've increased the aperture to 2.8.


Breakfast Table #2
A closer shot of the above setup, as I found the black chair pretty out of place :(


Breakfast Table #3
Frog eye view (is there such a view?) of the above setup. I can see the lid of my beloved blue thermos here ^_^ you like?


The photog
Just woke up, haven't had breakfast, haven't showered...(OK, stop there. Too much info!)


The height booster
Many of you must recognise the green stool. Obviously my 154cm height is not enough to take the shots.

Now, tell me, which shot is your favorite and why?

All shots taken with CANON EOS 400D with 50mm f/1.8 lens.

Ho Ho Congee & Noodle - Do You Fake It? - DoF Cheats

Are you a dedicated food paparazzi?
Do you always carry your giant DSLR around when dining out?

I must confess that I am not. The DSLR is too lazy to lug around to work along with my 1000001 items stuffed into my purse every day. I don't welcome the additional kilo of luggage.

Plus, I don't always document my meals, unless there's something special, i.e:
- It is not what I've been eating the same damn shit over and over for one month straight
- The meal is especially yummy
- The meal sucked big time, it is worth mentioning
- I haven't blogged about the said yummility/disastrous meal

However, I always carry my humble little point and shoot (Canon IXUS 870IS), just in case I desperately needed to document something. It works mighty fine. Most importantly, it has a magical slimming effect when I take pictures of my daily outfit (yes, I am that narcissistic!).

But taking photographs of food? Well, although it's nice...but it's not amazing.

Here comes another dirty little secret...

I like faking it.

Faking waa...t?
Oh, relax, sous chef.
I like faking the blurry effect of what we can get with DSLR camera to create Depth of Field, using an easy photoshop trick.

Please bear in mind that I am by no means a photoshop expert, nor an expert in photography....just sharin', okie? ^_*

1. Open the file in Photoshop (I am using Adobe Photoshop CS3)


2. Sharpen it.
If it looks too sharp/too harsh/too oily/too shiny, simply undo it.


3. Select blur tool


4. Select brush size, mode (normal/lighten/darken) and strength (100%)


5....and blur the heck outta that background.

Blur the parts which aren't supposed to be the star (focus) of the photograph.
There are other ways to blur it even more, but since I am to lazy to select parts, I chose this method.
Shaking my mouse vigorously to get a more blurry effect is (hopefully) a good exercise for my wrist.
Hehe *idiotic giggle*

6. Save the edited photograph

...and that's it!

Of course, you can pair this dummy trick with other photoshop magic tricks such as adjusting the lighting, colors, removing my eyebags or even adding Rob Pattinson as my dinner date ...we'll get into some of that next time, okie?

Now the food...what did I do to increase my dress size that night?

Jar Jeong Hor Fun (Spicy Meat Sauce on Rice Noodles)

This dish is normally served with egg noodles, but I love rice noodles. The sauce is a little on the sweet side, not exactly my favorite jar jeong noodle, but it's nothing that can't be fixed with a dash of soy sauce.

Beef Cake Steamed Rice with Egg

Imagine what you can do with that bowl of raw egg...(go all the way, this is not a PG-13 blog hehe)

Pour it over the beef rice...


Mix it nice...


Pour soy sauce on top...again, the soy sauce served with this rice is a little too sweet. Needed to add a regular soy sauce.


Ah! I remembered to save an original copy (the "before" version) of the above edited photo.

A bit dark and gloomy, don't you think? You can still see sous chef's striped shirt pretty clearly here.

Fragrant and springy beef cake...with satiny smooth, creamy egg...and a dash of soy....

Yum.
I was kinda jealous of sous chef's order.

Now, don't we always want a combination of textures?

We need something crunchy!
These deep fried wontons with a mayo dip were just what we needed.

...and of course I had to fool myself that I eat somehow healthily, by ordering a side of veggie.

The water spinach with preserved beancurd sauce was again...a little too sweet.
Anyway, all in all, it was a good dinner. I'd go back for the beef cake steamed rice and fried wontons for sure.

One good thing about eating in a mall is....I could buy a dress one size bigger right after dinner.

Ho Ho Congee & Noodle
Metroplaza, Kwai Fong (Kwai Fong MTR Station Exit E), 3rd floor
葵芳興芳路223號新都會廣場3樓370-374號
Tel: 2487 7668