So you’re starving. Maybe you skipped a main meal or two in your constant sprint to a day full of meetings, managing to gulp down an energy bar en route from Building A to Building B. Maybe in between Chem Lab 46A and Engineering 113, you haven’t had so much as a wheatgrass shot in your stomach. Or maybe you’ve completed a two-hour workout, darned proud of yourself for making it through, but knowing if you don’t get some food in your system, you’re going to keel over before you make it home.

Now you’re staring down this delectable burger, a juicy 1/3-pounder patty nestled atop a bed of caramelized onions, underneath a blanket of oozy, melting cheese, crowned with some tart tomato slices, dill pickle chips, and a generous scattering of fresh greens. Those lightly-toasted buns with their mean grill lines just call out for you to sink in with your teeth and tear out a good chunk, satisfying your craving. Go ahead, you know you deserve it.

Or maybe you’re more in the mood for some savory garlic noodles, the sweet smell of shrimp sautéed in a rich, buttery garlic sauce creating an aroma in the air that you find hard to resist. Maybe you’re feeling adventurous today and decide to go for that pork belly sandwich, with pork chunks embedded next to the Asian sauerkraut, all wrapped up in a crispy French baguette.

With the latest wave of “Moveable Feast” lunch truck goodness, delivering interesting, savory, French-Vietnamese fusion food conveniently to a location near you, is Le Bon de Cuisine. Their menu keeps it hearty and fulfilling with just the right fusion flare to make it interesting. Hungry for a more permanent solution to having to hunt down Le Bon when you’re bit with the craving bug? Good news for you, as Le Bon’s main chef is planning to open up a restaurant, offering these and other delectables soon in San Jose. That’s right, pork belly sandwich at your beck and call, right where you know you can find it. Yeah, you know you want it, so come get you some.

As we say goodbye to 2011, we also say goodbye to the headache of renovating our photography
studio. We spent 3 months dealing with the fine white dust from the drywall, the teeth-shattering jackhammering, and the noise from dawn till dusk. Renovation is super stressful, especially if, like me, you’re someone who is meticulous about the tiniest details: light, color, the shape of the tiles, design, ambiance, and on and on.

But the good news is that our studio renovation is finally complete! Champagne all around, please! Happy New Year!!!

We decided to go through the remodeling process because we wanted to be able use the studio as an elegant backdrop in photos. Renovation of this proportion usually takes 6 months, but we
completed a majority of it in just under 3 months because we are utilizing the space as a studio and can’t have such a long downtime. We had to be extremely creative in making the renovations in sections.

We did all the interior design ourselves, and we’re so please with how it turned out! The studio used to be really dark, but now light pours in from skylights and windows. Glass doors open onto the yard, creating a flow between indoor/outdoor living space.

We created more light by adding 7 new skylights, and a bunch of new windows. We also installed at least 60+ new light fixtures into the studio, most of which are LED (energy efficient and non-toxic).

The interior has a wedding theme with a glamorous, contemporary, warm and extremely sexy feel. The furniture is modern and cozy, the perfect place for couples who are getting married to get comfortable, have some wine and cheese, and chat with us about their plans.

The fireplace is elongated, see-through and set into beautifully curved tiles, bordered by wood. The other side has a large black granite surround, sitting on a sensual red wall. The see-through fireplace is fun because it’s essentially 2 fireplaces in one.

The salon also received a facelift with new light fixtures, glass French doors and new flooring.

With its beautiful lighting, flowing design, comfortable furnishings and elegant touches throughout the space, visitors tell us the new studio has the feel of a high-end lounge.

“The Untouchables”, “Air Jordan”, “The Rush Street”, “The Sears Tower” are all names of pizzas at Pizza Chicago. Restaurant locations are in Palo Alto, San Jose and Santa Clara. These pizzas have a few thing in common. Beyond fresh ingredients, their meat (sausage, for example) are the size of small apricots, tender and delicious. The pizza served here are deep dish. The dough rises to a beautiful golden brown.

They serve 16 variety of pizzas. We photographed only 11 of their pizzas and 7 other dishes, total of 18, all in under 2 full days. For a normal shoot, this may take all the way up to 3 days. Most restaurant owners are astounded by how long food photography and styling takes until they experience the process. In extreme cases such as the BigMac^TM by McDonald’s, would take one full day to photograph that single image.

Why does it take hours or days to photograph food? Isn’t it just clicking the shutter? Some reasons aren’t just the photography itself but a team, working together to create the perfect images to represent your company, as much as a perfect logo to showcase what you believe in.

1. Composition of the photograph. Knowing where the image will end up, allow us to compose the shots to the final composition. If you look at this shot, the area where they want the photo is extremely horizontal. Where most photos are 4×6″, this is a 4×14″ !!! Without compositing for this shot, the image will not fit at all in the space allocated. A close working relationship with the graphic designer is necessary.
   
   Notice how we leave space on the right for the bottom of a coke glass and allow the “Order Online” promotion to seep into the image without disrupting the image of the pizza. Pizza Chicago’s new website (like what you see in the image below) should be online soon.

(Click image to Enlarge)


2. Marketing direction determines the lighting, props and the environment on how the product should be photographed under. We used the pans used by the restaurant, creating a rustic and homey look, and we photographed the pizzas on the same table that their customers will see in the restaurant instead of a white background or a beautiful wood table, like what we did for Sam’s BarBeQue in San Jose.
   
   Since these are deep-dish pizzas, we have to showcase how thick the pans and hence, how thick the pizzas are. Only by going lower on the shot can we achieve that.
3. Photographed food sells better. Go to a restaurant and open up a restaurant menu. Nine times out of ten, you’ll point to a photo (if there is one) of a dish that looks delicious and say, “I want that”.
   Understanding this point allows the owner to either select the dishes that they want to sell more or the food item that are more colorful and attractive.



4. Lighting. The make-it or break-it to a food photograph. Mediocre lighting technique makes the food photos look like it was photograph for facebook and yelp. It makes the food and restaurant look cheap and that they can’t afford a food photographer. Check out the salad below, the greens, rings of onions and tomatoes screams freshness and glows in the light. There is a definite wow factor that makes you want to eat the menu photos! Setting up each shot and moving lights around for the next shot can take some time to gobo, flag, reflect, etc.
5. Food Stylist Since we’ve worked closely with numerous food stylists, we have a great idea of how to coordinate the dishes coming out of the kitchen, styling, photographing, review process. Everything becomes smooth and the owner learns a great deal on how to present their food after the shoot. In this case, Juan of Pizza Chicago decided he now wants all their Cookieza (A buttery chocolate chip cookie baked when ordered, topped with a Haagen-Daz vanilla ice-cream & drizzled with caramel sauce) to now come with a cute mint behind the ice-cream.
   
   Depending on how crucial the image is, we can spend hours arranging each sesame on a bun to ensure the perfect look to the image. Understanding composition and art appreciation goes a long way here. Beyond the rules on “hero” food item, separation, etc., there are many other things that comes into play, such as market trends, colors, etc.



6. Review and approval of images – With new technology, we can now wirelessly photograph the food and then immediately upon clicking the shutter, see the photographs. However, this also means that the lighting for the photographs need to be spectacular that they come out fantastic, straight out of the camera. These images in this blog are nearly all straight out of camera, what the owner saw during the shoot itself. Without this process, it’s going to be a shoot in the dark. Why would you pay someone money to photograph your food when you don’t even know if the image will turn out well.

Investment in time and money on better food photographs yields a high ROI (Return On Investment). Images that you get from a food photographer will pay itself back, years and years after the initial investment. These images ends up on the menu, website, reviews sites, brochures, banners, tradeshow booths, coupons, etc.

Staying ahead of the curve with marketing and smart investments will allow a restaurant or a food company to be extremely successful.

What better way to enjoy good food and wine is to have them with great friends. An invitation to fine dining with Carol + Chris and Terel + Stacia is met by a surprisingly gorgeous home, a warm family and friends, Stroy + Laura and Danean + Brad.

How much fun can a few hours be? Watch and find out!

We are very blessed to be one of Yelp’s highest ranked photographer in the bay area. Yup, with approx. 50 FIVE STARS reviews, we feel loved. However, today came an email stating that we now have a negative FAT ONE STAR review in Yelp! A one-star what?!!

We’re breaking the mold ! Making history and causing chaos in the industry. People officially now hate us on Yelp!

- Michael Soo
Sad Photographer of the Year

As a photographer, I often get to work with a lot of pretty models, but I’m used to it, and as a professional, I would never ever drool over them. However, with this particular photo shoot, I really found it difficult.

My latest models have been making me drool like crazy. The curves on those thighs and legs, their beautiful golden tone and the color on that tender rack of juiciness are all irresistable. All this is set against the rich, warm colors of the backdrop, a beautiful table hand-made from two logs. They’re exactly what I like capturing in my pictures. I’m talking about the barbeque chicken and ribs from Sam’s BBQ restaurant here. It’s a good thing that Sam actually fed us before the shoot, making it the tastiest shoot that I’ve worked on, literally.

Sam’s father opened the restaurant some years ago, and today, it is packed with fun and good food, even on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. That’s because Sam is a brilliant marketeer. He hires in a band on slow nights and is now having professional pictures taken of his food. This was great timing as one of the catalogs is now asking to include his restaurant in their book because others have provided terrible quality pictures. This is such a great opportunity to show off his food and have people drooling for more.

At the end of the shoot, Sam offered me a gift – the beautiful wood table he made for the backdrop. He had heard how much I loved it. What a beautiful piece of art any photographer would appreciate! Thanks Sam!

The past two months has been nothing but a truly humbling experience for us. We have been blogged, reviewed, voted and published. Here are some of our recent delightful encounters that made us blush to no end…

• As of today, we’ve been voted to TOP THREE of the BEST Wedding Photographer in the entire San Francisco Bay Area by San Francisco Chronicle. Help us Capture The Love become #1 !!!

• Queensberry saw our work and they love what they saw!

• Profoto, a high end international professional lighting company interviewed and blogged about us

• James Robinson, a fellow photographer found us via the Profoto Blog and went ahead to interview us

• Our work was published by both Gizmodo AND Engadget at the same time!

• We got into the front cover and numerous pages of the highly successful Nesting Newbies magazine!

• We’ve taught in several highly successful workshops in Santana Row and were requested by Smugmug to be the South Bay’s Smug Leader, proceed to give talks and organize activities for hundreds of local photographers!

We feel really blessed and we’re definitely counting our blessings and appreciate all the support and love we have gotten over the years from everyone!

Very excited to announce the release of the Nesting Newbies, Winter 2010 issue!. This issue’s really cooking!! The food section was shot in Christopher Peacock’s Cabinetry Showroom in San Francisco. Christopher, the English kitchen designer has a client list that includes the Clintons, Mariah Carey, Toni Morrison and the likes. His kitchen won the 2008 Kitchen of the Year!

With great kitchens, should good food be prepared! Along with good food, must great food photography be designed.

Why “design”? Magazine layouts dictate the orientation and composition of each shot. So, thinking and planning with the final design in mind will ensure that the photographs are crafted for the text, design and layout. It is imperative to think 10 steps ahead when it comes to nearly all genre of photography. It’s like playing a good game of chess.

Here we photographed not only most of the food showcased in the magazine (without a food stylist, might I add), but all 10-20 food items in just a few mere hours. Such method of shooting will drive insane all, but the most hardened food photographers.

Here on the left is a brandied tomato cream soup. It is absolutely delicious but REALLY? Soup like these should not be poured into cup this size. It’s such a tease. Plus, I can’t stick my tongue too far into the cup when I’m finished, to lick up the remains.

This is definitely a great magazine that I would read from cover to cover. Well done, team!!

What a super fun weekend!! Over 100+ photographers attended our Photography Made Simple workshop in Maggiano’s Little Italy in Santana Row, San Jose.

Everyone loved the breakfast and lunch!

We got some great comments and emails from the attendees. Here are some great ones,

1. “Michael, the workshop exceeded my expectations. In addition to being very informative, it was also most enjoyable. From the first minute to the very end I was captivated. Thank you” – Trevor Ngo
2. “I especially liked Michael’s philosophy that to make pictures stand out, they have to be taken from the heart, and it shows in his work”…read more – Michelle Ma
3. “It was like 10 years of professional skills of composition, lighting, creative view, crop, portrait demo, to some photoshop retouching techniques packed into an injection. Voila!” …read more… – Dee Lee
4. “I want to give a huge recommendation for Michael’s photography workshops. I took Michael’s portrait and lighting workshop a few weeks ago and it was great! Whether you are just starting out or are an experienced photographer, there is much to be learned from him…”read more… – John Harrison

Here’s a shot of the back of my head, facing my class in Maggiano’s Little Italy, Santana Row, San Jose.

Now, doesn’t it reminds you of this product?

I love good wine, so maybe I sent out a telepathic message to Dominus Estate, the Yountville-based maker of exquisite, velvety Bordeaux-style wines made in the “terroir” style. For those who don’t know, and I certainly didn’t, this traditional mode of wine-making works magic with climate and soil to produce wonderful vintages.

Anyway, Dominus found me, and we quickly agreed to work together. They gave me three bottles-two to photograph and one to pour from—and a beautiful etched decanter to use in the shots. I loved the decanter, because it does such a great job of showing off the lovely deep purple of the wine.

You’ve probably read it in this blog before…bottles, mirrors, anything glass is tricky to photograph. Glass reflects everything around it and can really wash out detail. That’s a big deal because you need to use at least four different light sources and modifiers to properly light just one bottle. That’s if your goal is to make the bottle look smooth and sleek and ready to leap off the wine merchant’s shelf into the buyer’s arms.

At my studio, we carefully lit the wine and took lots of pictures to arrive at the few Dominus had agreed to purchase. They were so happy with the results, though, that they walked away with double the number of images instead. And I ended up with all three bottles of $120/bottle wines as gifts. Whee!!!