Iced Oolong Tea - Summer Perfection

This was my last minute submission to July's Still Life Fotografi club event.

Why so last minute?
I was down and out.
I had no idea whatsoever.
I was not inspired.
Something had been bothering me, I had been upset, putting on a (in Chinese) "black face" or "long face" for a while. Trust me, it ain't pretty.

I had hoped that some beautiful shots for this photography club assignment would've cheered me up. I attempted to take some pictures of bottled vitamin C drinks...and the results were...

...let's say they made my face a few kilometers longer, even darker than midnight.

That's that, I gave up (my body doesn't really have any cells of persistence, I reckon) I thought I wasn't gonna prepare anything to submit anymore. But on Saturday morning, looking forward to prepare food for a party I was hosting, an idea suddenly hit me.


Hey. I don't have to be too ambitious...I don't need to make any fancy drinks...I don't have to try styling my drinks to appear cute and adorable (I suck at cute food styling).
Why not try something natural?
What I do love to drink to cool myself down in these scorching hot summer days?
Fancy cocktails? Pretty sodas? Avant garde looking dessert drinks?
Not really.
All I wanted was a glass of unsweetened tea, icy cold, with ice cubes....just like how I used to have it back home in Indonesia, sipped right in front of my dangerously overheated laptop, in a hot summer afternoon, fingers typing furiously...chatting, browsing for recipes, and gawking at food (or some hot guys) pictures.

Nothing's more perfect and thirst quenching.

Now, photographically....
The picture was taken with my Canon EOS400D camera, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens, Aperture priority mode, f stop bracketed from 3.5-4.5, ISO100, with natural back light coming from my living room windows. This time I didn't do any studio set up, it was taken as if I would have enjoyed the drink, just placing the drinks on my old Chinese computer desk. The "glass" used is my favorite, it is originally a container of Chinese rice wine, and the bottle of oolong tea is something which can be easily purchased from any convenience shops/supermarkets here.

A handy tip I learnt from the club: to get those nice little bubble of sweats from the cold drinks on the glass, put the glass in your freezer for a while before taking pictures (thanks, Shinta, it works!)

After seeing the photo results, my face was no longer long nor dark. ^_^ Cheers!