Skip to main content

Chef Chang

Had an opportunity to shoot the great Chef Peter Chang for Oxford American Magazine. Todd Kliman, a food writer expresses his quest for his cuisine in this article.




Considered one of best Schezuan Chef, he is known to pick-up and leave once he is 'discovered'. Todd managed to track him down to Charlettesville, VA where he was cooking in a very low key restaurant named "Taste of China".



I was asked to photograph him in his surroundings that depicts his elusiveness and his tendency to shy away from the spotlight. It should have a mysterious mood so I brought my own light for more dramatic lighting.



Carol Ann Fitzgerald the editor, allowed me creative freedom to shoot whatever that seemed to fit the article. A rare oppurtunity indeed!


Soon after the magazine was released on beginning of March, he took off again! Unbeliveable. I'm so glad that I had the chance to shoot this intriguing figure.



During the shoot, he never came across as a person who despises the media, but I did notice that he was a bit shy and just wanted to get it over with so he can go back to work. It's hard to understand, especially in the western culture to shy away from fame and attention, but in some way its not that crazy that he just wants to stay in the kitchen and cook. More attention and hoopla means more time away from the kitchen.




Another thing that I did noticed was that he has been in this country for about 10 years and did not speak a word of english. I think its understandable if you just work in the kitchen 8-10 hours a day where you have limited contact with others. This gets me to think that Mr. Chang just wants to keep his head down and cook his cusine. Bravo Chef Chang.

Till next time!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Large Format ...Slight Return

Took out my Linhof 4x5 field camera out for a spin. Tripod, cable release, focusing cloth, loupe, lightmeter, and film holders! The gang's all here. Linhof Technica III, (circa 1940's) with Fujinon 150mm 5.6 a modern lens design.  Bull Run Park near Manassas VA.The camera is wonderfully made with machined aluminum with German engineering. Like Butter. Working with a 4x5 is a whole different world. It takes long to set up and there are so many things that you can screw up. "Did I cock the shutter? check focus?, meter reading, dark slide out? lock the movements?... There are like 13 different steps that you have to make to take a picture.  So why do it when I can just point my 5d and shoot in easy one two steps?  Reasons may vary, but I do it because of the camera movements. The tilts, swings, shifts. These cameras were made so you can technically control how the image hits the film plane. You can achieve "technically perfect" images, whatever that means. 
5 comments
Read more

Polaroid Negative?

I've been wanting to do color large format for awhile. When there were photo labs around the corner, it wasn't hard to do a E-6 process in a day or two. Now that process has gotten expensive and if you're doing sheet film, its even more pain. So my solution... Polaroid! well technically, it should be called "instant film" since Polaroid is trademarked term. I'm using  Fuji FP 100c45. But here's the twist. I wanted a different look. If I want true colors, I wouldn't bother with the cost of 2 bucks per shot.  I also was fascinated with some surface texture that I saw on polaroids.  I recently came across some sites that talks about turning a polaroid into negatives. Its true that Polariod years ago did have those positive/negative film, but they've discontinued all instant film a couple of years ago.   The process is simple. you take bleach and take off the black stuff on the part that you throw away.  Once the black part is off, you have a negati
5 comments
Read more

Boston: B&W Architecture with Leica Q2M: From a Purist Perspective.

I swear I was going to switch out my black and white ONLY Leica Q2M to a regular Q2 color camera before going to this trip.  I"m glad I didn't.   Oh, before I forget, take a look at my icandy slide shows .  I will be making slideshows that is designed for big screen TV's.  Take a look at this one: Ok, back to the topic on hand.  So one of the most asked question about the Leica Q2M is, 'why limit yourself to just black and white when you can easily convert color photos to BW?'  Very good question.  My answer is,  if you know with certainty you want the best quality BW image possible, you want the dedicated monochrome camera.  Am I being a staunch purist? or is there a practical argument for it? Let's talk about it.  Beacon Street Boston,  MA One of many beautiful architecture on that hill.   First, this camera doesn't have any moire filter on the sensor.  Moire filters are on most color camera sensors to get rid of those annoying repeating patterns that loo
Post a Comment
Read more