Mido

Barsoum

Something dark with lots of my favorite color combinations to match my very personal style. I've always wondered what color cooked octopus actually is. As one of my favorite animals, I know they can change color while they are alive, but as I was shooting this, I actually got confused several times. In the end, I went with purple when I was developing the photo. It just suits it so much! There was a lot of work to show the details and bring out the textures in the other ingredients and supporting elements as well. I hope you all appreciate this shot as much as I do.

This was a fun experiment that I had always dreamed of. I made my own chicken Chiashu for this and I really wanted to show even the flying drops of soup in the air. This is what would happen if you trip and accidentally hot a bowl of Ramen, I guess.

My best friend - R.I.P. - was a Dungeons & Dragons fan and a DM. One day he introduced me to the D&D Cookbook; a place where food and fantasy come together and nothing ever spoke to me more vividly than these two topics. Fantasy was always a part of my life and everything I do. It was a main source of inspiration.

This Bouillabaisse was inspired from the cookbook and one of the most interesting parts of creating this was that I had to go to my grandmother's house in order to find some authentically old looking props, to match the scene I was building. The sourdough bread was provided by Diver Baker.

This was actually a homage to Nikki Astwood and my entry into an Instagram challenge hosted by her and Food Art Project.
I wanted to try an slightly break the common way of laying out these kinds of setups. Instead of a square, heart or circle with a defined edge, I thought of creating a more dynamic shape that would lead us to the hero dish.
This photo also won first place. Thank you Nikki and Mridul.

I had this vision of a monochromatic blue set and the most prominent thing on that set would be the orange yolk of a soft boiled egg.

I proceeded to collect all the blue props I could find and started building. An additional touch that helped me enhance the storytelling, was the collaboration with Queen Of Embroidery - Neveen Wassef. She hand embroidered my favorite quote as well as an unfinished dove on a circular canvas in Sashiko stitching to match the little blue bread basket. It was a great delight and an honor to have her contribute to this project.

Two years after I took this photo, I went back and rebuilt the entire set once again in order to create a matching video for the story and enter an online challenge. That video also won the Best Video award.
The Blue Breakfast is still one of my proudest pieces and I believe that it holds symbolic value that reflects the sadness that goes on in the world, while we still manage to enjoy our lavish breakfasts.