My Very Own Food Photographer

My Dolphin is such a darling. He has gone and bought himself a fantabulous camera, the Canon EOS 30D, plus a macro lens and has appointed himself my personal food photographer!

What a sweetheart! I have to admit that I had a right go at him when he came skulking him with the more expensive prosumer model because I was convinced this was just one of his phases which would go the way of his home gym, architectural scale modelling kits etc...all the things that are collecting dust and mice droppings in the storeroom.

But I'm really impressed!!

Here are a couple of shots he took like, within a week of getting the camera and no lessons or anything!!

I'm so proud :)))

Foto-Graphee

So the new biz is about food, and nothing sells food on the web better than mouth-watering pictures.

I explored three options:
1. Ripping photos off other cookbooks
2. Using stock images
3. Shootin' my own shit

I'm too much of a coward to rip photos off cookbooks because as a true Singaporean (and Rafflesian no less) I live in mortal fear of getting caught by The Authorities. Bugger the IP issues, it's all about getting in trouble.

Stock images were interesting and I looked in quite a few libraries. Most stock libaries operate on 3 licenses : rights-managed, rights-ready & royalty-free. A rights-managed picture for use in Singapore only, for 6 months, on a web page would cost about S$400 - this excludes the cost of the buying the image from the stock library. Buying royalty-free images still cost about S$80-150.....so this wasn't the greatest option for me either. And of course, you're limited to recipes that they have images of!

But if you're looking for stock images, my favourite places are Corbis, Getty Images, Age Fotostock & R. Ian Lloyd.

So it was down to shootin' my own shit. My extremely helpful and talented professional photographer friend, Amos Wong took us down to Peninsula Shopping Centre (not Peninsula Plaza!) to look at little studio set-ups.

We have our eye on the Canon EOS 400D which The Camera Workshop was selling at S$1250 incl a sd card & bag and 55mm lens.

Cathay Photo also sold a neat mini digital studio kit that comes with a table top, lights and everything for $808.50. I think that's the set-up I'm going to go for. Here are the specs below.

THANKS AMOSQUITO!!


How exciting! I got my business account ATM / debit card thingy today and can start purchasing stuff on the company!!!

Someone keep me away from Chloe's new 2007 Paddington satchel because...err, well, you know, I need a bag to carry the camera.....