allVishal.com - Food Photography - Comments

Your imperialist-fu is most

Vishal — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:03:10 -0700

Your imperialist-fu is most welcome compared to the hundreds of trackbacks I get per day trying to appropriate my blog as ad-space for viagra, xanax and phentermine.

Other than the first, I have no idea what the other ones even are! Don't they realise I'm Indian? We still call aspirin 'aspro'!

Sadly it seems your comments continue to be caught by the bot, and I can't find a place to change that. So if you comment and it doesn't show up please be patient until I find it on my daily run though the backend and publish it.

IM IN UR SPAM FILTER, F*XX0RIN UR COMMENT THREAD

dan l-k — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:51:49 -0700

Obviously, it's trying to prevent my rampant cultural appropriation. Ha! My imperialist-fu is mighty!

You're right, that would be

Vishal — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 05:39:12 -0700

You're right, that would be the way to make a masala omelet (but don't add in any water, of course). Generally speaking, Indian omelets are prepared without the tomatoes. If you ask for a regular omelet in most places you get a salty (by Western standards), fully cooked -- some would say overcooked -- disc with with fresh green chillies and finely chopped onion in it. The onions are mild, and are therefore put in raw into the egg mix itself before pouring. It adds a nice sweet and crunchy dimension to it.

I too am more of an omelet man, having tried every variation I can think of (and then some). The burji is something I've never fully experimented with. I'm sure you could add a whole bunch of things to it from bell peppers to bacon and come out with something edible.

(and on a side note, sorry your comment took so long to show up. It seems that whatever CMS I use, the spam filter just wuvs you.)

Omne vivum ex ovo.

dan l-k — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:08:37 -0700

I imagine a pre-beaten egg mixture added to the bhaji in a big skillet or wok would make a fine omelet. (I am an omelet guy. Scrambled eggs, not so much, although the dry consistency of this might make me a convert.)

I know I've seen turmeric in the spice aisle of almost every grocery store I've been in; it shouldn't be hard to acquire in one o' them Effnic neighborhoods in NYC.

Bhurji Pav Today!

Nandita — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:49:30 -0700

You have now made me sufficiently drool. now, i have to go have bhurji pav this afternoon in the mess. They make it really well, and its totally filling. Good ol' bhurji-pav

Fairly easy to find these

Vishal — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:54:58 -0700

Fairly easy to find these days in a supermarket, but I'm not sure about the US; grocery availability is not a sure thing (since finding Basil over here is a pain).

If you want to be really hardcore you can try and track down a small Indian store that grinds its own spices. This is how it's been done in India -- branded packets produced by a large company are still fairly new -- and they do everything from spices to flours of all kinds.

The resulting quality tends to be much, much better; the pot of turmeric I got from my grandmother in India (she bought the dry, whole turmeric root herself and got it ground at the mill down the road) is miles better than the store-bought one I have. The latter is yellower, but the former's flavour is more delicately developed.

Store bought is still fine, though. It's just like the difference between regular brushes and sable brushes: at the end of the day it's all down to how you use them.

Must. Find. Turmeric.

Spyder — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 08:33:25 -0700

Must. Find. Turmeric.

All that glitters...

Vishal — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:45:43 -0700

You do realise that the food only looks good, right? It's like those fantastic looking pictures they use at fast food joints, only I'm more Dogme 95 about it and don't use hairspray and laquer, but actual edible food.

Edible still doesn't mean tasty, however.

Come make food for me! Your

Maija — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 03:28:21 -0700

Come make food for me! Your cooking always looks so delicious. (Although I don't really like rucola.)

Rocket and its many names

Vishal — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 02:53:44 -0700

Rocket is, I believe, also called Arugula or Rucola and whatnot. It's a lovely spicy herb (at least the local variety is) that is a pain-in-the-ass to clean -- sand just clings to it, but hooray for salad spinners! The taste is well-worth the fifteen minutes or so it takes to clean a couple of bunches. Hopefully in less sandy parts of the world you won't have this problem. I use it in cold and warm salads, sandwiches (goes great with sausages) and even thrown in last minute into hot pasta and risotto (it wilts a little but still packs in the flavour). A lot tastier than the watery local lettuce.

I would love to see these crappy photos you speak of.

Thanks for the compliments, and now I must go and try to make prison food sexy.

Oh, and I wrote a bunch of food photography tips, but it was far too long to squeeze into a comment. I'll go slap some photos on it and post it up as its own thing tomorrow.

So, I tried taking photos of

Spyder — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:16:42 -0700

So, I tried taking photos of my last meal (haha); I plated it and everything (cilantro is such a versatile garnish), but my photos were rather lousy. I need to start employing a mini tripod of some kind (stacked books, a glass, etc.), I get bad camera shake.... and have shitty lighting too (ah, florescents).

Gonna have another go tonight after (during?) dinner.

Oh, and as usual your photos look delicious (whats in rocketsalad? looks tasty). Have you ever thought of doing cookbook photography? Youve got a knack for making the food look tasty and inviting (as opposed to many recipe books with lovely prison style photos).

Focus Tricks

Vishal — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 00:28:45 -0700

If you mean the way only parts of the picture are in focus and everything else is blurry, well that has to do with Depth of Field, which you can control with the Aperture setting on your camera.

Many consumer cameras do not have 'manual' controls like these, but if you do have a mode (usually called ASM or PASM) on the dial then you can change the settings to A (Aperture Priority, where the aperture can be set manually and the shutter and other settings adjust to accomodate it), S (Shutter Priority, where the shutter time can be set manually) and M (Manual, where you can usually set aperture, shutter, ISO (how 'fast' the film is) and other settings for the perfect combination.

A low aperture (2.8) will result in a shallow depth of field, so only a thin slice of imaginary area will be in focus in the finished photo. Setting the higher number apertures gives you a wider DoF and that can be used when you want a everything to be in focus. Note that the higher aperture means there's less light coming in and so you will either need a steadier, longer shot to keep things sharp and bright, a higher ISO setting -- or a combination of both.

DoF can also be enhanced or simulated in image manipulation programs like The GIMP and Photoshop (here's a simple example).

I used a Kodak c875 camera for these; a lot more on it later, including tips on how to choose a good compact.

By the way, did I meantion

Spyder — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 18:57:56 -0700

By the way, did I meantion that the soft fade out of focus thing you do is fantastic? Its one of the things that gives your photos so much character, you make them larger-than-life!

Any technical tips you can share for us non-techs out here?
What kind of camera do you have these days anyway?

Cute!

Spyder — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 06:55:50 -0700

Wow, those are wonderfully fantastic! Im vaguely curious to try this myself.... maybe start growing them in my cubicle as an odd piece of plant life in this drab, mustard colored space....

Names that came immediately to mind for no apparent reason: Mortimer and Sly.

Ive been trying to sprout avocado pits with no luck... poop.

Site Updates

Vishal — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 02:08:26 -0700

Yeah, I wondered about that. What message did it give you when you went to "allvishal.com/blog"? It should give you "page not found" with the new layout and links. Hmm, I should look into making that more user-friendly.

A lot more photos are definitely coming up. I held off posting things from my vacation so far, and now there's a lot of stuff with the new camera.

Lots of stuff coming up!

(also, threaded comments, woohoo!)