Food photography

It's going to be Christmas soon and end of 2008. So please allow me to recap on what I have been doing this year. Hmm... beginning of the year I indulged myself in food photography as a guest photog for the shot. It's a free photoshoot and please don't curse me yet. The photoshoot is for a cafe in The Gardens, Kuala Lumpur, as the manager of the joint is the sister in law of my friend. They're going to print out a new menu to be used for the cafe and so knowing that my friend is into photography, we were invited to do the shot.

Honestly, before this, I know nothing about food photography. But when opportunities like this knocks on your door, you would like to open it quickly. So I spend some time googling for the food shots on the internet and the next morning I'm ready for the shot. Reach the place about an hour before it opens and started to setup the right place. With the lightstand and tripod ready, we are ready for our very first food photography.

Photography is quite new to me as I've just been shooting since mid last year. Got serious about after my wedding in September. And on that morning, I know nothing about off camera lighting. Haha.. anyway, my friend setup the position of the lights, switch our cameras on CLS mode and flash on TTL and then we started shooting. Dish after dish, shots after shots.. Got some interesting shots but just not quite up to standard. I did learn a lot that day, knowing that not only composition and lighting comes into play. You've got to have to know about the food, the utensils involved and most important of all, "speed".

No wonder they said that food photography is the toughest.

Adstudio's Flexibounce

First of all, let me give you a brief introduction for this product. It is created by a local studio called Adstudio. The flexibounce just been added to the list of light modifiers already in the market. So what makes this product stands above the rest?


The flexibounce is made of plastic board which can be normally found in plastic folders in stationery shops. It's is very lightweight and on the inner walls of flexibounce, there are 3 reflectors to redirect the light so it's concentrated to the opening and to the diffuser on top. This is to minimized on the light spilled to the back of the camera.

Size wise it's more or less the same size as the Gary Fong's lightsphere and whaletail but definitely more portable and lighter. This is a plus point for the Flexibounce since its light weight and foldable and so it fits perfectly into my camera bag without taking much space.

Another ingenious design comes from the mount area of the Flexibounce. It uses a velcro strip glued together to an anti slip mat. Just velcro it around the flash head and attach the Flexibounce and you're all set. The good thing about this design is that, it will fit most if not all the external flash unit in the market. Neat huh.

The Flexibounce is built for event photography on camera flash. Its lightweight gives you the flexibility to move around without having to carry more weight. The design of the Flexibounce helps to spread the light for wide group shots. However you can still have the options between a 80%-20%, bounce and fill light setting VS 20%-80% setup.

So the conclusion is that, this is no miracle light modifier but it's nonetheless a good product. Should you buy it? I would say try it out first, see if you likes it.

Okay, before I sign off, here's a group shot using the Flexibounce. I don't know about you, but I think it's a little over exposed.

Butterfly shootout

We gathered for a photo shootout at the Kuala Lumpur's Butterfly park yesterday. I have been talking about it for quite some time now. The last time I was there but it started drizzling and we had to called it off. Few months later, we finally got the chance to visit the place again and it was a blast.

A brief description of the place,

"the Kuala Lumpur Butterfly Park, just a stone's throw from the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park. The Butterfly Park houses more than 6,000 butterflies from 120 exotic species.

The park is an imitation of the butterfly's natural habitat. It includes more than 15,000 plants from 100 species that has been painstakingly landscaped to resemble a Malaysian rainforest atmosphere.

Contributing to the Butterfly Park's beautiful landscape is a uniquely designed hydro-pond built with a limestone path right in the centre. Surrounding this hydro-pond is a gazebo, commanding a breathtaking view.

There is a nursery and breeding area for the butterflies. The park includes both preserved and live specimens, totaling 1,230 species in all. Facilities include an informative insect museum.

There is also a souvenir shop near the exit selling lots of local handicrafts and framed butterflies and beetles. You can enjoy a glimpse of butterflies at this unique park!"

Here are some of the shots I took at the park, more can be found in my flickr page

Okay, this isn't really a butterfly. I found this guy shortly after I went inside. He stays real still as seems he's modelling for this shot.

This my first time photoshooting insects, so hope that you will like the shots. Those shots were taken using my Nikon D80 together with my Nikkor 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. To add to that, I attached the ring flash adapter which I bought last month. I must say that the ring flash works really great for macro. The subjects were beautifully lit and I even got my friend's interest of getting one for himself.

Lastly, I had a great time photoshooting these beautiful butterflies and looking forward my next photoshoot outing.

Thanks for reading.

Mini drift cars

First let me kickoff with the series which I shot recently, my mini drift cars. They are about the size of your palm and they are built with serious details. Since I have only a SB-800 so most of the stuff I shot at home are using just one light source.

The setup is pretty simple. I placed the cars on a piece of black cardboard, and used a black cardboard at the back and side of the cars. I placed a semi-translucent coroplast on top of the cars using it as a diffuser. Then i placed my SB-800 to fire on the semi-translucent board on top making it a huge diffuser to lit up the top part of the cars. Then i placed some smaller pieces of white paper as reflector on the sides and front of the car just to fill-in the lights to the sides and front of the cars.

Finally, the white reflectors are removed from the shot using Photoshop and voila! There you have it. Just a simple lighting for these little cars.