Her World Plus Photography Day Out @ Beanstro Suntec City Mall

For people like me who love to take photos of the food they and their meal companions eat, we all go by this mantra: the camera has to eat first before we do. At least to me, it's not so much about flaunting or sharing what you eat but rather, I just wish to document what I've tried before especially on overseas trips because there is a high chance that I won't be able to go back to the same place and eat the same thing. As such, I don't post everything to social media or on this blog and most of these photos actually become my personal collection or shared with close friends.

Despite this urge to document what we eat, the act of taking photos at the dining table has to be done on the mutual understanding that you do not take so long to grab a shot until it makes the food turn cold or keeps your companions waiting while they are famished. Usually, I take pictures of my own food only unless my companions offer to let me take a picture because they know about my habit. That way, I won't have to worry about offending people or causing any unnecessary inconveniences to them.

I don't bring my Sony camera around for the purpose of taking food photos only because it's just too big and heavy to carry around As such, I have to rely on my Sony phone's camera most of the time where I'm generally quite pleased with the results. However, the biggest problem when doing indoor shooting of food is the lighting. In a dark place, the food can barely be seen but with a flash, the food's colours are distorted. In an overly lit place or if your table is just beneath the lights, the food looks washed out. Due to the light source's direction, trying to avoid casting a shadow from your arms and the handphone onto the dish is another issue. Much as I would like to learn how to overcome such issues and there are indeed many tips online, I thought it would be better to go for seminars or classes to learn to take better photos (not just the food ones) where I can consult the experts. However, such classes tend to be a bit expensive and are restricted to people who own certain brands of cameras because each manufacturer's functions tend to differ. As such, as a Sony user, it doesn't really make sense for me to go to a Canon class.

Her World Plus Photography Day Out came at the right time. It was specifically targeted at teaching people how to improve on taking food shots and the event wasn't too expensive nor lasted for a long time (just 1.5 hours) so I jumped at the chance to take part in this. Moreover, there were cakes provided by Beanstro (another dining concept by The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf) for the purpose of hands-on training and participants could have their cake and eat it too.

This event held on 9 May was largely divided into three sections. First of all, Nugene Chiang, a photography expert and trainer from Canon shared tips on taking food photos and offered a sneak look into the differences between casual and professional food photography. It was intriguing to know how certain foods were not really what they seemed to be in photos and how they were made to achieve that effect. I'm glad that this didn't turn out to be a sales pitch despite the fact that the event was partly sponsored by Canon and there was mention of some of the functions in Canon cameras. In fact, there was enough information given without feeling over burdensome and the time allocated for the sharing session was apt. In short, it was quite fun to learn from Nugene on some things to take note of in order to improve the food shots.

The second part was a sharing session by local instagrammer Eileen Ong. This is just my personal opinion though but Eileen probably wasn't used to public speaking and was understandably nervous so it was a bit difficult trying to understand what she was saying at times. However, I appreciated her effort in preparing various shots to show the audience what she meant instead of trying to put things in theory only. It was interesting to see how she composed her shots using props or existing things like your clothes, the wall or even your hands. I do have to admit that perhaps not of all of her advice was feasible in practice especially moving your food around to another part of the restaurant or cafe just to take a photo. In that sense, it was slightly disappointing not to hear things such as how she overcomes issues such as lighting if you can't change your seat in the restaurant or cafe. Nonetheless, I thought that it was better to have a balanced view on this topic of food photos by letting us hear the views from a casual photographer like most, if not all of the participants were.

Last but not least, the participants were given time to practice taking shots of the cakes and snacks dished out by Beanstro. At the end of the session, they could get one printout of their photo using the Selphy printing machine and submit any of their photos for a voting contest organised by Her World. As far as I saw, nobody really bothered to ask the staff why there was no cutlery on the tables in the first place because we all knew that we had to "feed" our cameras first.

For those who didn't bring their own cameras, they could borrow one from Canon which had to be returned at the end of the session. I brought mine and felt a bit out of place because it was not a Canon. By the time I finished taking my shots, I noticed that my companion and I were the ones to start eating our cakes while others were still going around to take pictures. Not that we were fast or anything but I guess we took enough pictures by then. As for the quality of the photos printed by Selphy, the colours turned out OK but I was puzzled why it cropped off the top of the photo (the last one in this post) and thus it did not look as good as it is in digital form. I guess the printer had to resize to fit the printing paper but if so, this wouldn't be something I would consider getting to print my photos because they should appear as they were taken.

To sum things up, it was a pretty enjoyable way to spend my Saturday afternoon and I look forward to attending more of such events in future. I don't know if my contest entry (not posted here though) will qualify to be one of the Top 10 for the voting round which starts from 15 May but if it does, I will be praying hard that I win the first price because the Canon G7X camera looks really cool and can be brought around more easily for my local food outings. Will you vote for me if I really get selected? ^__^