Chicken Buffalo

Recently, my wife's Chicken Buffalo has been a hit!

The first time I brought my wife's version of Chicken Buffalo in our office was during my birthday celebration. Actually, all the food that was prepared were given all a thumbs up but the Chicken Buffalo stood up from the rest and had repeat orders.

Presenting my wife's Chicken Buffalo.



I have been longing to shoot these Chicken Buffalo and it's only now that I had the chance. It is an impromptu shoot and I squeezed those brain cells to recall all those tips on how to shoot food.

Now for the "How I Shot It" part.

The above photo was the result of an impromptu shoot during one of the repeat order preparations. I had to do the (cramming) setup while the chicken are being prepared and cooked.

First, I searched for some inspiration on how to shoot these delicious Chicken Buffalo. Mostly I found images that are on a basket and white plates. I didn't have plain white plates nor those food baskets. So, I scoured around to replace those basket and white plates base and I found a wooden chopping board from my props box which I thought would work as a replacement.

I then looked for a container that would contain the sour cream sauce and my wife suggested these sort of cup that was white inside but blue on the outside. I then based the table lining on this container's color.

Now that I got the basic elements, I started laying down the table lining and positioning the wooden chopping board and started framing with the given space constraint. I then slowly added the main light which created a heavy shadow in the sauce container. I tried using a reflector to lift up the shadow but it wasn't enough thus I added another light to act as a fill light. Had to play around with some flash power settings to get the highlight and fill light combination just right.

After I got some sample shots of the position and lighting, I gradually added elements into the picture. I wanted to add celery but we didn't had one but luckily we had some leeks. I used the stalk part to act as celery. This green stuff will add contrast and color to the photo. For the garnishing, I chopped more of the leeks as a replacement for onion springs that was scattered and placed on the cream. I had to do what I had at hand. The fried garlic were part of the original garnishing so there was abundant of it.

So, after a couple of shots tweaking, adding, and adjusting more fill-light boards came out the result as shown above and below.

I adjusted the white balance and levels in post processing using GIMP.

Happy new year to all!