So it’s six seven am on Monday. I’ve just opened my favourite excel spreadsheet and sipping down on the hard filter brew Vanessa makes for the bunch of us every morning. No it’s not. It’s Saturday afternoon as I write this. Well, it sort of came early a couple of weekends ago, the sun I mean, and I took every opportunity to exploit it before it gave way to the rain clouds again. It was still abit breezy, but was a nice little preview of picnic in the park. So it was me, grass, my 50mm and a little bit of wholefoods and now, you too.

Picnic mix.

I think the serpentine/kensington palace is my favourite bit of Hyde Park. Girls sunbathing with their girly mates, and the boys occasional letting their balls (totally intended) accidentally roll toward the unsuspecting beauties. Yes. Spring is back. I picked all the nibbly ones from the rich wholefoods selection in High Street Ken. Cold by the time I broke out all the boxes, including the crunchy jerusalem artichokes.

Depth of food

Shutterbugs love (the lack of) depth of field. It’s the easiest way to give your photos an ‘artistic look’ without much effort. Take these yummy buttermilk fried chicken drumsticks for example. Notice how there’s only one drumstick in total focus in the picture and the other sticks are thrown out of focus. Yeah, you can do this too by keeping your camera aperture at it’s widest. Try it, different model, different capabilities of course, if it permits, set your camera to ‘Aperture Mode’, and set the ‘f/’ number to it’s lowest possible number and then go as close as you can, and focus on what you want to keep in focus, and then let the camera do the rest.

It’ll create some lovingly tasty shots. The fried chicken carried a faint creamy edge to it, oh yummy stuff. Could do with abit more temperature, but I ain’t complaining.

Time for wine

One of the coolest things happened to my inbox last night. Gary Vay.Ner.Chuck. sent me an email. I flipped out. Come on winos, you know him, the Thunder show? It’s only the internetz most watched wine review show, ever. I’ve been a vayniac for almost two years now, I subscribe to his video podcast and he is absolutely the most awesome wine critic around. One day Vaynerchuck will displace Bob Parker as the voice of wine, and I said it first.

So who knew that Wholefoods had impressive wines on their racks. An Australian Hunter valley semillon which showed the trademark clean, lively and crisp characteristics the hunter whites are famous for. Eight quid, not bad at all. Man I miss Sydney. Hunter valley is about a 3 hour drive from Sydney. My mate drove. We hit the information centre to get a map of the entire valley first and then we marked out the vineyards we wanted to visit.

We started at midday and since he was driving, he was only suppose to have about five glasses every three hours. As we got to each vineyards, we were greeted by the winemakers and these guys were the most passionate people I’ve ever met, best of all – they let us sample everything they made, including their premium stuff. We hit four vineyards before three pm, and then stopped at one of the many restaurants dotted around the valley. Food was amazing, needless to say, but the best memory from drinking on location was how every single sip was so alive. Everything tasted like freshly pressed grape juice and I had never quite had wine like that before.

It is true wine doesnt travel well, but great wine doesn’t come to you, you go to great wine. I’m still planning my trip to burgundy – it’s £899 for like five days staying with a winemaker I think. If anybody is up for it, email me.

So this is kind of what it feels like to picnic with me

The potato cake was pretty solid by the way, but I was ready to dig into the grilled sardines, they really look appetising. It’s a little under seasoned, needs just a dash of sea salt, but I don’t want to complain, the whole occasion and the rays of light are just so relaxing, I wish the afternoon sun would never leave. I was looking into my lightroom library the other day and it showed that I had taken something like 4,000 food photographs in the past six months. That’s a mad stat just thinking about it. Yes, I have more digital food pics than I do mp3s.

It gave me a little brainbolt about contracting myself as a food photographer for magazines, restaurants, pr companies… or just anybody who likes looking at pictures of food. That would be a nice little freelance job to have on the side, I mean, what are they going to do with the food after the fact right?

I mean, I’d eat it . Commitment to the job. 100% committed, passionate and environmentally friendly too. I can’t think of a better reason to do food photography other than that I want to eat what I shoot. Hey, that’s a great blog motto: ‘Eating everything I shoot’ , might use that for twitter or something.

Eating antipasti, last.

Im unconventional. I’m one of these problogger readers who swear by Darren’s secrets to success and am a student of copywritingblogging. But almost all of my pillar posts cross the four digit mark. Oh well, guess you need to break the rules to make new ones.

Join me for a real picnic, when the real Spring really arrives.

For now, the weather is still a little breezy, my hayfever hasn’t started yet, so spring is not really here yet. When it does roll around, I’m sure I’ll be back for a full on picnic.

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London does not always have bad weather. Sometimes, it really is awesome. Like this weekend for example. Spring came early and yes, while it’s a breezy 13C , the sunshine is just awesome. Just the colours… the vibrance… I had to do it, the internet deserves to know what a truly awesome place London morphs into … when the sun comes out.

Eating and reading in the park

The flowers in and around the Kensington Palace, with the Orangery (packed to the brim and looking like a two hour queue..) in the background. I was suppose to pop in for a spot of high tea but the queue was just ridiculous and perhaps it’s better to just roll around on the grass.

It’s been a while since I last did a proper edition of eat&read and I think I may just change it to a fortnightly one instead. Believe it or not, a eat&read post takes a really long time to produce. All the linking up, the rounding up, alot of ideas to organise and compose. I’m finally back from holiday and back to my tuesday/friday review schedule once again. If you havent read them yet, I posted a review of the new Italian crowd favourite Bocca di Lupo and also published a write-up of my visit to the Butcher’s block.

Brand new ideas.

I like this photo – it makes for a pretty kewl desktop wallpaper. This was shot with a nifty 50 mm at f/2.5 for you glass heads, processed with Capture NX2 (vivid option) and then exported with Lighroom 2.1.

I’m trialing my photos as desktop wallpapers and starting with this one as ‘beta’. You can download a large 1600 px version here. When the picture has finished loading, right-click on it and select ‘make as your background’ option, and make sure you tell me if you like it, or not.

I’ve upgraded to a brand new camera by the way, so picture quality should be even more sumptuous. It’s a little bittersweet to say goodbye to my trusty D40, but man the D90 is simply an awesome camera. Until I get the D300 that is. Ah yes, I don’t always think about food all the time, I also fantasize about sexy cameras, and also sexy site design.

For the benefit of my subscribers, I’ve streamlined the site design a little bit. It should be sleeker now, but it’s still abit of work in progress as there are a few more tiny features I would like to add to it, pop your browser to http://londoneater.com to have a quick look see. I’ll speak more about site design in another post some other time.

And before I go back to the park again..

Righto, it’s another glorious sunday morning as I write this and one more picture I’d like to make available for you to download as a wallpaper is this one of the wind blowing through a park chair, taken through a park chair.

I’m going to turn my little quickie wine guide into a free ebook for your to download sometime soon and would love to know if you’d like any of my foodie photos turned into full blown desktop wallpapers for you to peruse (ethically and for private use only, of course):

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(Almost) Everytime I’m out and about snapping things, I manage to get alot of pictures of the people around me. It started out being completely accidental, but these days I’ve started to realise that people are what adds to the buzz of a certain place. During this walk about, I captured some pretty beautiful people.

Like these lovely ladies whom asked me to help them take a snap (with their camera). I duly obliged and also took a picture of them with my nikon. So beautiful girl whoever you are, I gave you my url, if you are reading this, then please drop me an email at kang.leong@londoneater.com.

I’ll be waiting ….. in the mean time, check out the rest of the pictures from this trip.

Wide eyed wanderer

I wish I remember how it felt like to be ten years old, to be among the lights and the people. Everything seems to be in high technicolor and everything I experience is new. Oh, wait – I still feel like that now.

Making memories in a giant snow globe

People like observing other people. People like observing other people do stuff. People sometimes don’t realise that they are being observed while observing, like the way you are observing me observing these ladies in a giant snow globe.

Don’t forget the ones who put this thing together

This was taken close to the end of the night – he’s already closed shop and his grill is almost sprinkly clean. I like this photograph, he cuts a solitary figure in his christmas grill shop ….a hard days’ night.

Abit of sparkle

This was suppose to go into part one, being that it is big and sparkly , but then I thought, well look at all the folks watching the lights, those lights are very cool.

Is he a person too?

I’d like to think so.

And on that photograph…

I actually live very close to hyde park. In fact, I live so close to it, I can run there in 3 minutes. It feels very, very lonely living in zone one considering most of my mates are in the outer rims of zone four. But it’s been close to seven years since I made my residence in west london and it’s very much home to me now.

Anyway, it’s Sunday, it’s freezing cold and I need abit of warm mulled wine to keep me going. Hope you enjoyed this series and don’t forget to spend time with the loved ones today.

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Ok, so here’s the situation. It’s new year’s eve, it’s freezing cold at 3 C, you’re in London and you happen to walk past hyde park corner and wonder what the lights and fuss are all about. There’s far too many people around you, you hear the cheesy winter 80′s wham blaring from the hot dog stands, you see the children laughing with their parents and beautiful strangers walk up to you asking you to help them freeze their experience in time…. what do you do?

Too late, that was last year. It is now 2009, the winter wonderland in Hyde Park continues but it’s only staying till sunday (4th January 2009) and you can either go there NOW…. or you can keep on reading and I’ll show you the sprinkles of magic those Germans have brought to our park. ( and then you can go there tonight )

Remember this guy?

I always wondered what happens after christmas, where do all the lights go? What do you do with the tree, how about the decorations…. left over turkey – hey what if I’m still feeling those wintery feelings? But it’s like sombre and it’s already the 1st of Jan, yet I still don’t want to go back to work … can I please, please , please just have one more night to make those holiday blues go away?

Yes. You. Can.

What is this German sausage business?

The german sausage is a beauty, it’s really, really long, chock full of flavour, bouncier as oppose to our chunky and chewy sausages here… and it tastes great! Anyway, the winter wonderland is packed full of all manner of fun ( and it’s free ) , it’s got an ice rink, small but real ice. It has a mini london eye (weee..) , it has a roller-coaster ( it really does ) , a giant 40 feet slide ( I have photos to prove it ) and it has an ‘authentic’ german market featuring more wurst, baguettes, crepes and beer than you can shake a stick at. Wunderbar.

Take a walk with me why don’t you?

For it may be a dark and cold winter night, but behind it lies truly wondrous things of luminosity and fervent fan fare.

London is a truly atmospheric place. With every season, the city seems to morph itself to suit the occasion. January is traditionally the coldest month of the year and it looks like this year ( wow, it really is 2009 already ) is shaping up to be the same. But it’s not a bad thing that it’s cold, because that means that everybody wraps up warm, german christmas markets get setup and you get surrounded by the bright flourescent lights and the sound of warm laughter. The energy of happy people is really an experience on to itself, naturally I had to capture this on camera, to try and freeze the moments and encapsulate that energy.

Are you feeling the buzz yet?

Let’s jump into the ice rink

It was such a beautiful new year’s eve when I took this picture. Everything was perfect ( including the freezing cold ) and the ice rink really came alive with abit of sparkle and magic. I mean just look at it. The lights coming off the monuments of fun, erected in the distance – almost like flares stuck onto the structures, the moody blue spotlights shine a kind of neon cool to the icy surface and finally, the people bringing the whole experience to life.

….. and you even have a maintenence guy trying to fix a chink in the rink armour. It’s winter wonderland indeed.

Cycle Carousel

Or the merry go round as some people call it. I just had to do this one, it’s like one of the reasons why people invest in dSLRs: the long exposure. Actually this one was only a second long but gosh look at the lights coming off of that thing, it really was beautiful. I liked the fact that people actually stopped and just stared at it going round and round… ahh, why can’t it be like this everyday?

When I looked to my right, I saw this…

There’s the 40 foot slide! And to the left -though not very clear- are the lights coming off of the rollercoaster, let’s get abit closer…

….and there you have it, the glorious, glorious slide. Toward the left, you can actually see the people going up the thing. I think ‘Munchner Rutschh’ roughly translates to monster slide? I could be wrong, of course.

As I tilt the camera to the left, we have the BIG roller coaster. The lights, just look at the lights on that thing.

UFO lights

I almost forgot to mention this UFO spinner thing. I wouldn’t have thought that you needed me to fill in the words with this one, it spins and people stop and stare and marvel at the lights. Wooo…

Intermission, waiting for part two

I’ll have you know, I’m a very organised sort of guy. You’ve come to the end of the first act, think of it as the big opening with the car chase scene, the explosions and the excitement (anybody saw quantum of solace? ) , not much dialogue just plenty of action to numb your senses. In part two, things get abit intimate, we’ll step into the christmas market, we’ll have a look at the food on offer and we’ll have abit of conversation…

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