Squid Salad [Food Photographing Tips For Beginners]

I called this dish Squid Salad, but it contains more vegetables than squid. I like to eat squid aka calamari aka sotong in any dishes. However, I seldom cook squid at home as T likes only sambal sotong (squid in spicy chilli sauce). Well, actually he likes sambal for almost everything from sambal petai to sambal belacan with ikan bakar (grilled fish).

So, for this salad I ate almost all squids and he was happy with the salad. I used kinda Vietnamese dressing for this salad, got the recipe from my Vietnamese classmate years ago. She used it for salad with raw button mushroom and it was really good.

For making this salad, I think the most important is boiling the squid. I bet no one likes rubbery squid in the salad. A chef of Chinese cooking program suggested that we should boil squid for 6 seconds or less. I cooked by eye, drained once they started to curl up and straight away got them in iced water.

Dressing:

1 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsps lemon juice
1 tbsp sugar (add more if desired)
1-2 tsps fish sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
1-2 slices ginger, minced
1 red chilli, seeded and minced
1 tsp sesame oil (optional)

**Put all ingredients in a bowl (avoid stainless steel) and mix well.

Vegetables:
Cabbage
Cucumber
Baby Corns (boiled)
Grape Tomatoes
Coriander

* * * * *

Okay, now about the tips for food photographing. Actually, I am reluctant to give any tips about photographing as I myself an amateur in photographing. Since many readers asking about lighting and camera used, I write a bit and hope this post will clear the question marks.

Q: Do I use any special lighting for my photos?
A: No, I do not. Some (very few) photos were taken with flash (built-in). I usually take my photos during daytime with natural light, that is sunlight.

Q: How to make my food/dish looks clear and pop-up?
A: Always take photo at the bright spot, and use a white cardboard to reflect the light. Lazy to use the cardboard sometimes, so some of my photos are not very clear.

Q: What type of camera do I use?
A: I am using DSLR, Pentax K100D, wishing for a Nikon D90 or Canon EOS-500 or Rebel. (waving to sponsor out there)

Examples:

In the photo below, the sunlight came from diagonal-right direction and the white cardboard was placed at the opposite side (line B). Sometimes I use a L shape cardboard to reflect the light (line A). For photo editing, I used Picasa.