Shadows & Spices: Behind the Scenes

A close-up of a glowing filament lightbulb hanging against a rain-splattered window, with a blurry, bokeh view of a city street in the background.

Food in Joo Chiat After Midnight: Frames, Steam, and Streetlight

By Sarah Teh - December 31, 2025

Joo Chiat at midnight is a vibrant stretch of color and movement. I come here not to list “food in Joo Chiat” or catalog signatures, but to watch the neighborhood build its portrait as blue hour fades beneath streetlight and neon. Every face, bowl, reflection, and plume of steam becomes part of how “Joo Chiat…

Read More
A moody urban street scene at twilight featuring colonial-style architecture and a car driving away with red taillights glowing against the blue sky.

Joo Chiat Road Food: Traces After Dark

By Sarah Teh - December 30, 2025

Opening: The Question, Reframed The search for joo chiat road food usually arrives with expectation. A food guide, a list, something mapped on Google Maps. This is not that. Joo Chiat Road runs 1.4 kilometres between Geylang Road and East Coast Road, a corridor of pre-war shophouses whose shutters lift and lower according to rhythms…

Read More
Top-down view of a minimalist fine dining dish featuring seared protein with an artistic smear of green herb sauce and edible flowers on a matte black plate.

Plating Composition in Fine Dining: How Newly Starred Michelin Kitchens Compose a Plate

By Sarah Teh - December 24, 2025

In Singapore, the journey of a newly starred Michelin restaurant begins long before the first bite. Plating in fine dining is more than decoration; it is a carefully composed arrangement that reflects the chef’s vision, the dish’s flavours, and the dining experience as a whole. Chefs in these kitchens treat each plate as a story,…

Read More
A focused chef in a dim kitchen tasting steaming soup from a spoon, lit by a cool overhead light.

The Art of Waiting: Chef Portraits Photography

By Sarah Teh - November 19, 2025

The kitchen closes. The last server clocks out, and the dining room succumbs to a deep, restful silence. As a photographer who specializes in capturing culinary scenes after dark, I’ve learned that the most profound moments don’t happen during the frantic pace of service. They unfold in the quiet hours that follow, when a chef…

Read More
Chef tossing ingredients in a blazing wok, orange flames leaping upward in a dark kitchen, captured mid-motion for a light-painting effect

Flame Photography Techniques: Light Painting with Kitchen Flames – A Midnight Photographer’s Technical Guide

By Sarah Teh - October 22, 2025

There is a raw, untamed energy in a kitchen at full tilt. For those of us who practice food photography, the most captivating element is often the most dangerous: fire. A burst of flame from a wok or the steady burn of candles on a dining table is more than just part of the cooking…

Read More
Top-down view of a rugged canvas camera bag mid-shoot, revealing a DSLR camera, a half-eaten granola bar, and a clear water bottle—fuel for a food photographer on the move. Scattered nearby are a second DSLR, lens cap, and a 32GB SanDisk SD card, capturing the raw essentials of a shoot day diet: hydration, quick calories, and gear that never rests.

The Food Photographer Diet: What I Eat While Shooting Everyone Else’s Food

By Sarah Teh - October 8, 2025

I once spent four hours on a food shoot for a twelve-course tasting menu. Each plate was a colorful masterpiece, carefully created through deliberate styling and composition. The client wanted photos that told a story. It was a symphony of culinary art that required all my attention and skills. What did I have for dinner…

Read More