Amazing Food Bloggers in Hong Kong

Traditionally, Hong Kong has termed people who talk about food with special authority as Eating Gods (食神).  They claim to have good knowledge on all kinds of food, and are often invited to appear on television programs to show off their knowledge.  They sometimes write books on food as well.  They act as spokespersons for restaurants or named brands once they gain enough popularity, but I do not agree that using celebrity endorsement is an effective promotion strategy.

Ever since I discovered the food blogger network foodbuzz last year, I was surprised to find that in this part of the world there is a lot of very high quality food blogging going on.  To me these bloggers are far more capable than the Eating Gods because they are usually the webmasters of their blogs, photographers, photoshop experts, chefs and writers combined into one!  In the past few months, I wandered across the internet and found these Hong Kong-based food bloggers who love food and enjoy sharing their passion with the rest of us.  The following is a brief introduction of each one of them.

Mochachocolata Rita is a food blogger who is also an expert in food photography.  Her food photos especially those taken in low-light restaurants are really good.  She uses a Canon 7D DSLR camera to take food photos.  She's also a featured publisher in foodbuzz.  Her blog is in English.  Her twitter is @mochachocolata.

Gregoire Michaud works at the Four Seasons Hotel as a pastry chef.  His blog is in English and is full of pastry photos (and lots of closeup shots too).  His twitter is @gregoiremichaud.

Hong Kong Food Blog by Anna is a down-to-earth food blog that tells the world about the traditional Chinese food in Hong Kong.  Her blog is in English.

mandykwok1031 has tons of photos of ordinary dishes that people make at home.  Sometimes recipes are also provided.  "Mandy" sometimes appears at www.discuss.com.hk.  The blog is in Chinese (Cantonese style).

tkocell sometimes hangs out at the www.dchome.net and www.discuss.com.hk food forums.  There are tons of food photos taken at home and at restaurants.  The blog is in Chinese.

fatjoykitchen categorizes its blog with Chinese cooking techniques which is very useful to find recipes based on techniques.  There are tons of food photos too.  The blog is in Chinese.

Jason Bon Vivant has lots of food photos taken in the restaurants he visits.  The photos are really nice.

wokwithnana produces many food-related videos.  Most of the videos are in English.  Their twitter is @wokwithnana.

Cai Lan (蔡瀾) is a well-known food critic (but nobody calls him an Eating God for some reason) and author.  He appears in many food-related television programs and has written many books on food and restaurants.  Lately he takes as many food pictures as he possibly can with his iPhone: raw beef, Japanese rice etc and put them in his microblog.  His blog is in Chinese.

The Chinese Soup Lady is a project between sisters Lisa and Tracy.  It has lots of soup recipes and pictures. The blog is in English.

If you come across any other amazing food bloggers in Hong Kong, please let me know!

Lit Your Food Subjects Nicely With Little Budget

When you are doing food photography at home, you have two choices for lighting your food subjects.  Either you use natural light or artificial light.  Using natural light means you need to set your food subjects near the window so that the sunlight can actually shine on the subjects.  That isn't always an option if your window is far away from the food subjects.  For me, my dining table is far away from the only window in the living room so I cannot use natural light on my food subjects.

The only other choice left for me is to use artificial light.  There are many options but I opted for an option with relatively little money.  I got a photography softbox set for about US$37.  It comes with a halogen light bulb (5500K), a stand and a softbox.

The halogen light bulb is big and it is rated to provide 5500K color temperature:

There is a cover on the softbox and I can remove the cover if desired:

Here is a picture with the light bulb on:

Here is a picture with the cover on:

This thing is called a softbox because the kit looks like a box is designed to soften the light.

This picture was shot without the softbox lighting:

This picture was shot with the softbox lighting:

The difference is quite big.  A softbox kit is relatively inexpensive and can provide the necessary artificial lighting at home.  Another good thing about this kit is that it is portable and can be disassembled and stored easily.  This kit is highly recommended.

Increase the Depth of Field in Closeup Food Photos

I must admit that for the longest time, I am an opposer of using any post-processing on digital photographs because I think it's cheating.  However, as I am starting to get into food photography, I find that most of my pictures have been less than satisfactory.

One day I was surfing online and found this great article by norecipes:
http://norecipes.com/2009/01/10/adobe-lightroom-tutorial-aka-my-dirty-little-secret/

I said to myself, perhaps this is what my food pictures were missing: the vibrant colors, the nice contrast, the correct exposure and white balance.  Without an expensive camera and all the elaborate lighting equipment that the pros use, I think I should give this a try.  It is the most cost effective solution.  I already have Photoshop CS5 but I haven't devoted the time and energy to learn how to use it properly.

It is always easier to learn something new by applying the knowledge to solve a real world problem.  I am told that some of my closeup pictures of fried rice were too blurry in the background.  Without retaking the pictures with a smaller f stop, is there something Photoshop can do to increase the depth of field?  As a matter of fact there is.

I took two pictures of the same fried rice but with the focus set in the front and the back.  This is the first picture with the focus set in the front:

This is the second picture with the focus set in the back:

Start Photoshop CS5 and launch the mini bridge application:

Load the two images into Photoshop CS5 as layers:

Select the layers and auto-align them:

Choose Projection->Auto.  Unchecked the lens correction (I think my 18-55mm Nikon lens is okay):

Now auto-blend the layers:

Perform the necessary post-processing of the merged images and here's the final image:

In the final image, there is little or no blur from the front to the back of the fried rice.

I will be using more Photoshop to post-process my food photos from now on.

Taking Food Photos at Restaurants

In food photography, lighting is everything.  The camera doesn't really matter in comparison.  As I am starting to get serious in this craft, I try to figure out the cheapest possible ways to take the best pictures.

I was having dinner at Ruby Tuesday the other night.  I took my Ricoh GX200 with me.  Lighting in most restaurants is terrible and they don't appreciate you using your camera flash.  In general, flashing directly at the food often results in too much light and the details of an image are lost.

Without using the camera flash and when the lighting is inadequate, I had to increase the ISO sensitivity on the camera.  Unfortunately in my opinion this camera produces fairly grainy images at ISO sensitivity 800 or above, even with noise reduction on.  It is best to leave the ISO sensitivity at 400.

I usually use the A (Aperture) mode on my cameras.  To avoid blurring the food image too much, I try to set the F stop on the Ricoh GX200 to a high number (for example, above 6).  However, the shutter speed will need to increase when the f stop is relatively low.  Any shutter speed higher than 1/60 seconds may result in shaky camera images.  The only solution is to put the camera on a steady surface and take the pictures.  This time I brought a very small tripod that looks like an octopus:

It is a very cheap tripod that I bought in a local camera accessory store.  It allows me to put my Ricoh GX200 on it and shoot steady images especially in low-light situations.  I set the self timer to 2 seconds to avoid having to press the shutter, which may result in shaking the camera.

I wanted to take pictures of the full rack ribs I ordered.  However, the ribs were dark.  I didn't like the picture because I could hardly see the texture on the ribs:

I gave my Nokia E63 to my girlfriend.  She took out her Nokia E63 at the same time and turned on the flash lights on the phones.  These flash lights are constant light sources.  After shining the flash lights on the ribs, I shot the ribs again and this time the texture was clearly visible:

I used the same technique and shot the smashed potatoes:

Although the shadows might be a bit too much, the pictures were bright and clear.  One can also be more creative and bounces strong lights off from a white napkin to soften the lights further.

The lesson to learn here is that lighting is important in food photography especially in low-light situations such as in restaurants.  Try to be creative about the light sources.

Finally, I want to thank Ruby Tuesday for letting customers take pictures of their food.