Instant Photography, Live Event Photography by LiveStudios

Last week, Willy has had the pleasure to conduct a workshop at World Gourmet Summit 2010: An Afternoon of Photography Appreciation with Leica. Together with food stylist, Chef Anderson Ho, they share tips on food photography and styling techniques at Singapore Tourism Board’s Auditorium.

Getting started

A shiny, metallic surface to demonstate reflection. The ‘before’ shot.

And after…

The setup. Using clamps to hold the styrofoam boards to bounce off light in a certain direction and having black cardboards as background to provide an edge for light reflection.

Chef Anderson, on the other hand, is preparing the hero dish. It is interesting to note that food for photography should not be eaten (unless you wish to) as they are specially handled. This means to say that the food are either not fully cooked (as above, Chef is just flaming the squid for its visual appeal)… or you just don’t want to eat them upon seeing how they are being handled during preparation.

A small step ladder comes into handy in this case.

One trick to make your food shine – glycerin. You can opt fpr egg white as a more readily available option.

Getting the aperture, ISO and white balance right is just the first step. The purpose of food photography is to represent the dish at its best in a single shot. You will have to twig its ingredients around for it to look tastier.

Pulling the clam from behind the pasta and adjusting the position and angle of each clam to reveal the juices they contain.

You may also wish to consider what you would like to highlight in the dish, and ensuring that other ingredients do not steal its limelight. Therefore, it usually takes quite some time to manually adjust not only the settings of the camera, but also the presentation of dishes.

Due to a shortage of time, we didn’t manage to demonstrate capisicums being dunked into water as we had originally intended to. Click here to view the shots that we have done in our studio.

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It’s been a long while since we’ve updated this space. The past year has had been busy. We had more than 500 events that kept us going despite the worldwide economic crisis and we are really thankful for all our clients who have been supporting us all this while.

So here’s to another event(full) year ahead! New year resolutions (yes, we know it has been 4 months past the new year)? One of them is definitely to keep this space updated religiously!

Microsoft has organised a Photosynth 360 contest offering a unique look at Singapore’s historic, cultural and sporting landmarks using Microsoft® PhotoSynth technology. This competition encourages students and photo enthusiasts to select, capture and stitch photos of Singapore attractions into one big interactive 3D viewing experience.

Now you may be wondering how it all works. Photosynth takes your photos, mashes them together and recreates a 3D scene out of them that anyone can view and move around in. Vastly different from static photos and video, Photosynth allows you to explore details of places, objects, and events unlike any other media. You can’t stop video, move around and zoom in to check out the smallest details, but with Photosynth you can. And you can’t look at a photo gallery and immediately see the spatial relation between the photos, but with Photosynth you can. You get to visit places that you may not have been, yet knowing the exact details of each spot!

This contest positions Singapore as an ideal location to host international events like the Youth Olympic Games, as it presents Singapore’s unique cultural heritage, architecture and exclusive sporting infrastructure in a virtual 3D format to the international public. Beyond the games, the contest is a celebration of Singapore’s cityscape, and serves as an avenue for youth to express their creative interpretation of landmarks in a cinematic and immersive way. All the 3D synths of Singapore sites will be permanent fixtures on Bing Maps.

“It’s clear that photography has taken off in a big way in Singapore – there were a number of great synths that really captured the essence of a given landmark. Synthing opens up new areas for photographers, at any experience level, to express their creativity and create more artistic imagery. This competition was a great platform for encouraging young photographers to experiment with composition, lighting and how a fully 360 degree image differs from a static shot. Being able to have their work immortalised on Bing Maps is also pretty cool,” commented Willy, one of the judges for the contest.

Over an interview at Mediacorp Radio 938LIVE, Willy shares what this is all about with Keith Nakamura, John Fernandez and Zainolabidin Bin Esa. Check out the photosynth of the studio done at http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=54efa70e-9f9b-4fd5-a07d-39dde548ecd6.

Or do drop a visit at http://www.photosynth.net for more information.

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Livestudios toasted its way to the successful launch of Moët & Chandon’s latest product – Rose Imperial @ Clifford Pier. During the event, guests had the Livestudios team snapping glamour shots of them sipping on the new champagne.

Three of our photographers were stationed at our mobile studio setup with a luxurious-looking couch as the centre piece and flowing golden drapes as a backdrop. Guests were invited to pose as our photographers captured three different angles of them at the same time. Each set of three shots were printed in film-strip format. Upon receiving them, the guests raved about the unique print-outs, and they totally loved them! It was a great and sparkling night throughout. Check out the photos below!

Cheers!

Ta-da! The Images are presented into this stunning flim-like strips!

The Hunks!

One of the dynamic duo twins. The May and Choy Sisters.

Some pretty ladies~

Another one!

Finale shot~

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LG Singapore hired our Chief Photographer, Willy Foo to go around Singapore to take photos for a guess the location quiz. Can you guess where are the exact locations of the places showcased in these photos?

Location A

         Location B

          Location C

                                         Location D

        Location E

                Location F

                                           Location G

          Location H

        Location I

         Location J

Could you also have guessed that these photos are taken with a mobile phone? Willy was the featured photographer for the launch of LG Renoir, the hot new 8 megapixel camera phone. On the day of the launch, our crew went there with our mobile lighting to take pictures of the invited guests. All photos that you see here were taken with LG Renoir.

Willy giving a talk about how to choose a camera phone and what are the special features of LG Renoir.

The guests joining in the contest of guessing the locations of the places in the photographs.

The fabulous-looking LG Renoir promoters

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Martell recognises personalities who have risen to be the best in their industries. I am one of the lucky 10 who have been presented this award by Martell for 2008. More information profiles and videos can be seen from http://martell.com.sg. Click to ‘Rise Above’ and ‘More Information’.

Martell held the event at Old School and totally transformed the hall into a posh area befitting of the Martell label.

2 of our photographers were assigned to cover the event with David my business partner trying his hands on the camera as well – some decent results, considering he was fairly new behind the camera. Here’s a photo he took of me and Filmmaker & Photographer Nicholas Chee.

The awardees posed for a group photo with the head honcho of Martell. There are 10 awardees but Tim Nga, the actor couldn’t make it due to an overseas assignment.

Guests posed by a photowall as they were ushered in to the event area.

After the trailer video introducing each of us played on the screen, a spotlight behind the screen turned on casting a silhouette of the awardees as the screen is raised.

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Sunsilk held a press event at the Singapore Flyer and wanted us to print souvenirs for the guests with a popart effect in line their campaign identity.

We adapted our popart program to keep the same colours and look and results came out quite pleasing.

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Team VISA has been holding a couple of roadshows garnering support for Team Singapore for the Beijing Olympics 2008. A large board was setup and photocards were pasted to form the shape of Singapore on the board.

This round, Team Singapore visited Anglican High and the students wrote their well-wishes on blue boards and got a photo taken and printed as a photocard for them to bring home to show their friends and parents. An extra copy would also get pasted on the photowall.

Some of the Team Singapore players also posed with their supporters.

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Before you go, Wego! Cute Wego searches through 100+ travel sites in the time that it takes you to search one. Formerly known as Bezurk which I keep hearing in the Web in Travel conference I shoot for annually, it’s re-branded to a catchier and IMHO a more marketable name. The new site http://wego.com is friendly and easier to use too.

To make it more memorable for the guests, Wego hired models to pose with guests and they could choose from various backgrounds like a beach, Paris, Spain & Tokyo. It takes just over a minute to process each photo with the help of a semi-automated program I wrote. This is commonly known as green-screen technology but I prefer using a plain white background for various reasons that’s too tedious to discuss on the blog.

The superimposed prints were printed in 4R size and was only given to guests after the new brand was announced by the team.

Photocards were also printed with the Wego – Travel Search logo branding and given to the guests.

The sheer number of plasma screens in Barfly made it really exciting to take a photo and within seconds be surrounded by your own photos everywhere along the walls

Barfly had a nice ambience and just notice the number of Plasma screen they had on the walls.

We used a white backdrop for the screen. The models had a fun time as well.

Photocards were put on the wall where guests would exit where they just picked their own photos off.

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Sagatiba launched their brand in Singapore at the Marriott Pool Grill. It’s a Brazilian spirit that’s distilled from sugarcane and is used for Caipirintha, Brazil’s famed lime and sugar cocktail.

The evening was beautiful as the sky turned dark… kinda funny how the lighted construction cranes actually makes the shot look interesting.

The organisers did a great job with the invites… We do a lot of events but I’m impressed with this one. A lot of familiar faces and A-list guests turned up for a night of drinking and mingling. Guests were given photocards as a memento to help remember the night with old and new friends.

The lighting was great around the area for photography as well. Of course our new cameras helped to bring out the ambient lights, which would have been quite impossible to catch during events.

There was Brazilian music, models & fire breathers to entertain the guests.

The unique part about the Pool Grill is being able to hold a fashion show right in the water.

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LG launched what I think is a really clever marketing campaign. They hired movie director David Nutter to produce a TV series and challenged the whole world to discover the secret of the elusive Scarlet. Take a look at http://www.scarletseries.tv/

The event was held at the Singapore Flyer and the setup looks very glamorous and posh.

Many familiar faces turned up keen to find out who Scarlet really is.

LG’s business partners had a great time catching up with each other and mingling with the personalities.

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