Tong Sui (糖水)

A boutique asian desert shop

Coconut Jelly (椰子冻) is a famous asian desert, and one of my wife’s favorite. So when Tong Sui reached out to me, I was very excited to work with them. I was tasked with designing product pictures that will go on their website, in-store menu, as well as delivery platforms such as Uber Eats and Door Dash. During our communication they expressed that they want the picture to look simple yet elegant, and with the reference they provided, we shot the first test shot.

Lighting - I kept it fairly simple: key light from the right, with a piece of white foam on the left side to fill in some of the shadows to control the contrast.

Composition - I went with the classic forground/background technique to put some emphesis on the main subject. This works very well when shooting with a shallow depth of field, and it gives the image a dreamy feel, which is popular among asian drinks. During testing I shot the images vertical, but the final images will be in landscape.

We really loved how this turned out so we went forward with actual products and props, here are a couple of of them.

It was really fun working with them to craft these elegant product pictures for Tong Sui, be sure to check them out if you’re in the south San Francisco Bay Area. Thank you very much for reading, and I hope this helps provide some insights into the creative process of food/product photography.