On Assignment for Oglivy Australia

I recently had a 5 day assignment for the promotions arm of Oglivy Australia. The brief was to tag along with Australia Masterchef Winner Adam Liaw as he leads a group 6 Australian / New Zealand food journalists and bloggers as they eat their way across Kuala Lumpur and Malacca.  Not completely unchartered territory for me but a challenge non the less.
Challenge one was that apart from shadowing the group I was to provide images for each of the journalists stories. So essentially I'm shooting 5 stories at once while the bus moves from location to location. Tough but like anything, relax and work it. A place like Raju's (above and below) makes it a little easier.

I knew going it that it would be kind of a 'run and gun' situation. Work fast, get as many shots of the dishes, scene and group as possible while checking in with the journalists to see what they might need image wise.

Gear wise I packed two Canon full frame dSLR's, 3 lenses (all Canon) : 24-70mm f2.8, 70-200mm ISM f2.8, 50mm f1.2 (my primary 'food' lens), a 580 EXII speedlight + Pocketwizard Plus II triggers, and a Manfrotto Mag Fiber tripod. All of which (surprisingly) fit neatly into my ThinkTank Shape Shifter backpack. (for safety's sake I also packed the Ricoh GRD III).

 (above Master Chef Adam Liaw, below the hard working ladies of Bayan Indah Culinary Retreat).

Over the course of the week I ended up shooting about 50gb of images. Not an extradinary amount but we covered a lot of ground between the two cities.

(above : Adam Liaw and Author / Chef Florence Tan at the Majestic Hotel, Malacca. below : Ayam pongteh).

And at the end of the week I was reminded that hey, this ain't such a bad way to make a living.You meet interesting people.

And you get to eat the props.

 

Comments

[Gen Kanai]

Wonderful images. I've heard good things about Adam's cooking/cook book. How often did you break out the speedlite, just curious.

[Dave]

Thanks, Gen - I didn't get a chance to try anything that Adam cooked but people that did were certainly raving about it. He's a good guy so I'm sure it comes through in the book and his cooking.

I tried to stay away from the speedlights as much as possible. I actually had 3 with me (1 in the backpack and 2 in my luggage) that I used for cooking demonstrations at the Bayan Indah and Majestic Hotel (with Florence Tan above).

[Lina]

Dave, these pictures are awesome.

[Dave]

Thanks, Lina! I like that comment so much that I'm going to ignore your use of the word 'awesome'.