Welcome to The Storied Shot series, where I connect an image I created to a story I shared over on the podcast. In this series, I hope to share tips and tricks to creating a storytelling image, by diving deep into the decisions that I made to produce one particular photograph. If you want to learn more on a particular topic of food photography, I have an ever-growing list of resources right here! I always, always appreciate feedback or requests for more information! Just reach out to me at becky@thestoriedrecipe.com!
Here's the image we'll be studying today:
The Challenge
I perceived several challenges when preparing to take this image (and many other images of this Sticky Rice Cake).
First, in our interview for the podcast, Emily and I laughed about the fact that this cake is most definitely NOT photogenic. At best, it has a smooth beige appearance, and with anything less than a perfect touch from the baker, the cake becomes wrinkly and browned. As you can probably guess, my touch was less than perfect. Also, the recipe Emily gave me called for the recipe to be taken made in a rectangular pan. I find the rectangular bakes to be SO difficult to photograph! The reason for this is that the slices must be almost perfectly uniform. Even when I do manage to cut them perfectly, I just find squares and rectangles so difficult to style.
The second challenge was to make this photograph tell a story. Nian Gao, or Glutinous Rice Cake, or Sticky Rice Cake, is made for the Chinese New Year. The problem is that I know very little about the Chinese New Year. My guests often give me props or colors that they associate with their dish, but Emily did not. Therefore, the burden was on me to choose props that would immediately tell the viewer that this dish is associated with Chinese culture and the Lunar New Year. At the same time, I wanted to props to be authentic.
I used several techniques to meet both challenges. In general, when trying to make an ugly food beautiful, I like to think about the scene first, and then the food. I knew I needed to create a scene that was colorful, beautiful, and bigger than the food. That way, the food would not be the focus, the scene would be the focus.
I had these little origami papers around the house and I knew I wanted to include them. I hoped the Asian patterns and designs would give the viewer a clue. My first thought was to make mini fortune cookies from the papers. However, I learned from Huilan that fortune cookies are not authentic! No Chinese person or Chinese restaurant makes or serves fortune cookies. On the other hand, Huilan shared that she did create paper lanterns as a child. She played with them on Chinese New Year. So, that made the paper lanterns a really good choice.
I also like to include fresh things in a scene when the main dish is not so fresh. So I did a little more research and found that Mandarin oranges are related to the Chinese New Year. That was great news! They are abundant, colorful, and fresh.
Finally, any time I feel a dish is ugly, I always find a way to include greenery in the scene. Therefore, bamboo was a natural fit. Lucky for me, there just happened to be a big patch growing along a road that I frequent! So, the morning of the shoot, I just drove over there and clipped off several branches.
For the cake itself, I was worried about the rectangular shape. That had an easy fix! I simply made the recipe in a round pan.
Also, I knew that I was unlikely to achieve the perfectly smooth top that I saw in some images. What I needed was camouflage! Emily had suggested several stir-ins for the cake. Therefore, I hoped it wouldn't be too unorthodox to include a topping. After a quick image search, I saw that some top their cake with sesame seeds - just the camouflage I needed! I knew another bonus would be that this topping would add a light-catching texture.
So! That's the story of this shot! To hear more about Emily and Huilan and their experiences with Nian Gao and Chinese New Year, check out either of these episodes:
Episode 013 Sticky Rice Cake for the Chinese New Year
Bonus Episode 05, Happy Chinese New Year
To Make the Sticky Rice Cake, find the recipe here:
To find topical food photography resources, click here:
Printable Food Photography Resources
That's it! Let me know if you have any questions below!!
Would love to hear from you!