Curries and pastes - second batch of food packaging photos

Here are the second batches of the curries and pastes food packaging photos, shot last Sunday, March 25, 2007. I was recovering from a horrible flu and I guess was not at my peak form to shoot good photos. The photos turned out to be more suitable for magazine shots instead, albeit a bit dark.

There were instant pastes for nasi lemak sambal, prawn mee, chicken curry, fish curry, and curry laksa. As usual, my cousin who needed the service cooked and styled everything, while I just shot the photos. Took a longer time to shoot and convert the pictures as I was very tired and there were more products.



Curry Chicken


Nasi Lemak


Prawn mee


Curry laksa

Breakfast: Bacon & fried eggs, roasted rosemary and garlic potatoes, toast and tomato & lettuce salad

This was a spur-of-the-moment creation for breakfast today (March 17, 2007). I was supposed to go out for fish head noodles for breakfast today with a friend before heading to KLIA POS Malaysia to collect a parcel from the US (needed customs clearance apparently) but it was raining heavily and he had to run some errands for his friend so I managed to find some stuff in the refrigerator to come up with this. Tasted quite good except that the roasted potatoes were a bit too salty.

Pictures here taken without studio lighting and tripod, just with my external flash.

Recipe for roasted rosemary and garlic potatoes

Ingredients
5 or 6 small waxy potatoes (I used the pink skin ones, which can be found at Bangsar Village's Village Grocer, Cold Storage and Jusco)
1 sprig of rosemary
3 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
pinch of salt

Procedure
1. Preheat the oven for 20 mins (at 180C)
2. Clean the potatoes and cut into 4 quarters, leave the skin intact.
3. Chop the rosemary leaves and garlic finely.
4. Add the rosemary, garlic, salt and olive oil to the potatoes, mix till even.
5. Roast the potatoes for about 20 minutes, serve hot.

Curries...shot to get paid! Woo hoo...I'm "OFFICIALLY" a food photographer

The BIG DAY in my professional food photography journey. My cousin has approached me to help her take some food photos to used for product packaging. Her company sells packaged instant curry pastes. I bought a new studio lighting a couple of days ago just so that I can get to shoot these photos properly. On Friday night I was trying to get the lighting working and really had trouble getting the effects done properly. Thanks to Sam's suggestion (my interpreter), I managed to make it run properly, and by the time I figured out...it was already past midnight! Oh well, certainly worth the time I guess.

I didnt get paid much for this but now at least I can claim that I shoot food photographs professionally (even on a freelance basis hehe)! The lighting helped quite a bit. Took me like 3 hours to shoot for the 3 curry paste products, and another 3 hours to go through the photos, converted to JPGs from RAW files and burn the CDs.

Let me know what you think of the photos, would love to have feedback! Thanks Sam for the reminder on using the flash function of the lighting! P.S. Kindly DO NOT use these photos for any purposes as you and I can be sued if found to use these pictures. Sorry guys!








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My signature dish - Asam laksa (Rice noodles in spicy and sour fish soup Penang style)

Finally, pictures of my signature dish - Asam laksa (Rice noodles in spicy and sour fish soup Penang style) . And since I do not have much time today to post the recipe (it's way too complicated, needs about like 20 ingredients to make this soup noodles). And its the first time I take pictures of this dish as well. Made it for my mom's friends, my neighbours, cousins (and their kids), and a few of my friends for the final Chinese New Year open house thingy..

Shredded white radish, carrot, green mango and red radish salad

A good way to dispose leftover ingredients...I made this from the leftover ingredients for the Italian dinner on Monday, mainly shredded carrots, radish, green mango, red radish, yellow bell pepper, and coriander. The salad dressing was made from fish sauce, lime juice, organic cane sugar and shallots. (Fried the thinly sliced shallots with peanut oil, then add the rest of the ingredients). Sprinkle some toasted white sesame, pistachios and chopped macadamia nuts (leftover from the baked chocolate pudding) onto the salad before serving.