Portrait of Fergus Fung, co-founder of the World of Mouth food guide, Hong Kong, China. The portraits were taken at a restaurant above ground level, hence the residential high rise buildings in the background.
I fretted for most of this commission which was a wine tasting paired with dim sum. I was the third wheel at a lunch meeting between Fergus and the wine brand point of contact and they chatting away like old friends. The restaurant was full during lunch service and our table became increasingly full with empty plates, bottles and glasses. Suffice it to say this situation was less than ideal for either food photography or a portrait; in such a situation of a working restaurant with clients in the background and staff coming and going with both full and empty plates, it is impossible to exert any control. It is not possible to control the background, it is not possible to control the table and it is not possible either to find angles to photograph from or to move items already on the table without inconveniencing the other people at the table. In hindsight I should have told the wine brand, who set this up, that trying to take reasonable photography in such a situation was unreasonable.
Fortunately our lunch went on for so long that service finished around us and the tables reset for the evening; this gave me the chance to slide Fergus Fung over to a newly laid table with a clean background for the portraits. Two frames; I walked away with two reasonable frames, a frame with and a frame without a wine glass. With the restaurant closing for the afternoon, there was little opportunity to spend time and finesse the scene. The commission was for a vinter, hence the inclusion of the glass, even if personally I felt like I was crowbar’ing in an item which both did not belong there and also stuck out like a sore thumb; a solitary wine glass, on a Chinese restaurant table setting, looks odd to me.
