Q & A #1
Posted on April 10, 2007
Filed Under Announcements | 10 Comments
Well, I never really publicized my E-mail address, so when Matt took a look at the 50meals mail server, he found all these E-mails that were written to a bunch of weird addresses. For the record, you can E-mail me at KevCheng(at)50meals(.)com, or just leave a comment.
Since now all of a sudden I have all these E-mails with questions, some of them EXTREMELY good, I thought I should do a post to answer them.
1. Q: Wow, cool site! I really enjoy the pictures. What kind of software do you use to process the photos?
A: Thanks! I use Apple’s Aperture to process, organize, and adjust the photos. The key here is the camera, though. I use a FujiFilm S3Pro and none of the pictures here are adjusted much.
2. Q: I was wondering if you’d have recommendation for where a good place to start on Asian culinary adventure. sidenote, I’m what you’d call past really really white redneck from NC. I recently moved to southern California and am totally intrigued by your blog and interesting places you go.
Love the pics btw.
A: Asian culinary adventure, eh? I think one of the most popular and easily accessible foods is Dim Sum. It’s fun, frenzied, and you can see the food before you order it. I don’t have a Dim Sum place on this site yet, but try 888 Seafood, and hit it before 11:30 am to avoid a ridiculous wait. If you’ve never been to Dim Sum, check this entry for an example. 888 is right across the street from Peking Duck and Taiwanese breakfast.
3. Q: You should be a professional photographer. I’d totally buy a cookbook/magazine just by the photos alone. drool….
A: I AM a professional photographer! We do weddings, portraits and events, and now food! E-mail me at Kevin@bysnap.com if you need photographic services. Hmm, I wonder if readers are interested in a book, maybe at the end of the year I can make one… any takers?
4. Q: What’s your favorite Chinese restaurant of all time? Anywhere? I’m intrigued.
A: I LOVE Spices in San Francisco. I loved it so much, it pretty much was the first food blog entry I ever wrote. The place is just so hard core. Here’s the entry I made for Spices before I started 50meals.
The best time I’ve ever had was in a Taiwanese night market, though. Check this place out. Shilin Night Market
5. Q: I’m thinking about visiting Asia in a few months, where would you recommend? What’s like a #1 spot I HAVE to hit. I think we’re spending 2 weeks there.
A: I’m sorry to say I’ve only really been to Taiwan since I grew up there and know the area. You can have a great time visiting the restaurants, museums, night markets, the scenic national parks, deserted beaches and even hot springs! I know Japan is certainly on my list of places to go, and you won’t see much of China in two weeks. I’d say spend a week in Japan and another week in Taiwan. Although there’s still Hong Kong and Vietnam… yeah, I’m no help here.
6. Q: Love your site, the design layout and navigation. I love how thoughtful things are, it’s a refreshing view from all the other food blogs.
What software do you use to design the site? And how do you get your photos to look so great? I tried studying your picture and try to tilt my pictures but they just all look kind of tilted. What are you thinking when you take the photograph?
A: Great questions.
We use wordpress as our database backend and vertigo template for foundation of the design. The design is then modified by using an awesome OS X application called TextMate and all graphic and photo elements are edited on a Mac with Photoshop 7 or CS 2/3 — all of this was done by Matt. The food photos are done by myself and I use Aperture.
Now, the photography. They look pretty good because I have a camera that delivers amazing color and dynamic range. And, well, maybe because I’ve been shooting food for the past few months, I had some practice and things just tend to look better when you had some practice. If you go back to entry #1, you’d see it didn’t have as much “pop” before.
Tilting the camera is a great topic. I started doing the tilting thing around a year ago and had a lot of trouble making the picture work. It’s really a process of getting a feel of the subject and using the tilt to enhance it. It took a lot of trials and errors, but like a lot of art it just takes some effort to try to reconnect to some very basic human feelings and getting your tool to do what you want to do.
I tilt the picture to give the food a more dynamic feel, so it’s not just sitting there on a plate. I can’t really tell you how one picture “works,” it’s all very organic and it depends on lots of things… but I do keep in mind the “weight” of everything in the picture. You want to even things out so that a picture is never dominated on just one side of the frame. Vibrant colors adds to the weight of an object and so you should keep that in mind as well. Something I always think about when I take pictures is the focus, I want to capture the texture of the food and the actual focal point of the camera should be on that part of the food. I also try to keep distractions away from the background, I would arrange things on the table or just move myself or rotate the dish so I can cut out whatever is distracting. What a great question, I wish I could give you a more complete process but it’s everything all together all the time. Maybe you should just come with me to one of the future 50meals…
7. Q: I see you mention Taiwanese food as a separate category. What is the difference between Taiwanese food and Chinese food? Is Taiwanese food a cuisine or a style of cooking? Can I go to chinese restaurant and ask them to make it Taiwanese style?
A: Well, history isn’t too kind to the Chinese / Taiwanese people. See, Communists took over mainland China in 1949 after WWII and the Nationalist government had to relocate over to Taiwan. The identity of Taiwan and China is a politically charged topic, so I won’t go into too much further detail.
To keep things civil and simple, let’s just consider Taiwanese food a subset of Chinese food. Like Cajun cooking or California Fusion to us Americans. There can be some overlap and mixing, but you shouldn’t ask the restaurants to make something in a Taiwanese style or vice versa, that’d be like if you went to a California Pizza Kitchen and ask them to make their Thai Barbecue Pizza Chicago Deep Dish style. That’d be weird.
Great questions, please continue to write. If you need photography services, E-mail me at Kevin@BySnap.com, food or general questions about this website, please use the comment system or write to me at KevCheng(at)50meals dot com
Thanks to all of you for writing and reading, it’s been a really rewarding experience so far. Keep ‘em coming and I’ll keep posting! We still have 35 more meals to go!
« go back