I did it! (Sort of...)

I did it! I managed to photograph as planned. Well, at least the prawn sauce in the stone mortar. Here it is.

Some of you might wonder, "What happened to your planks and the spaghetti shot?"

Well, here's the story. I found an unused pallet near my studio on Saturday. I tried loading it into the car but I overestimated how "big" my car was. The pallet won't fit. I didn't bring a hand saw. It was around 5pm and started to rain. So, I headed back to get the handsaw. When I arrived home, it was raining cats and dogs and I thought that I'll do it the next morning.

I took my time on Sunday, enjoying waking up late, taking my own sweet time, enjoying our lunch at the comfort of our home. I headed off to reattempt cutting the pallets into half, and transporting it home. Cutting the pallet into half was the easy bit, but I needed to dismantle the planks and reassemble it with smaller gaps. The rain came pouring again, and I had no shelter at home to work on the planks. So, that's the end of the plank story, for today.

I shot the stone mortar quite late, around 10pm. By the time I finished, it was just not viable to shoot the spaghetti shot. Therefore, the spaghetti shot was postponed. I was slightly upset because I only got one shot instead of two, but I was also more happy that the prawn sauce in stone mortar turned out exactly like what I planned. It was easy, and didn't consume much of my time. I only took four test shots, prepped up the food, and shot the final shot.

My four test shots.

Test shot #1.
Flat lighting. I'd like to tone down the highlights. 1/125s, f20, ISO 100.

Test shot #2.
Exposure to my liking. Shadows turned out like I visualised. Need fill light in the stone mortar where the ingredients will sit.

Test shot #3.
Just another test to increase the shadows for definition.

Test shot #4. 
Final exposure. All to my liking. Added fill light into bowl of the stone mortar.

Here's my setup. 
Some behind the scenes for your reference. Nothing fancy. Just one light, and a white cardboard as fill light reflector.

These following images were taken by my luvly missus, while I was busy setting up. :)

The other ingredients were easy to setup. On the other hand, I scratched my head to find out what am I going to use for the liquid goo in the shot? At first I wanted to use Mayonaise, but then my missus suggested a brilliant substitute, which is F&N condensed milk (Woops! Sorry, that's actually sweetened creamer. BTW, does anyone know why they don't make real condensed milk in Malaysia anymore?). Yes, the one we use to make "Teh Tarik". It's got the right colour and viscosity. There you go, my little secret.

Lesson for this week:
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. Begin with an end in mind.