Chapter 9 – The First Camera in Life
From morning until 4 p.m., the day's work was finally done.
Chen Xing returned to the hotel to rest.
A group of hotel staff gathered around, flipping through the stored photos on the computer.
"How do you think these were shot?"
"Yeah, we just had dinner, and now we're hungry again."
"It's like we can smell the food."
Normally, when people look at food photos, they just think the dishes look delicious.
But for those working at Guangzhou Restaurant, they were so familiar with the dishes in the photos, some signature dishes were ordered dozens of times daily, that seeing them triggered a kind of mental response, making their brains misinterpret it as actually smelling the aroma again.
Bu Yongfeng lounged in his chair, slouched without any posture. Today's activity was equivalent to what he usually did in a whole month. After all, as a master chef teaching other head chefs, he rarely cooked personally anymore.
But looking at the amazed staff in front of the computer, Chef Bu couldn't help but smile fondly, feeling that all the effort today had been worth it.
He had a strong hunch that this new menu would be more successful than any before.
In all these years, he had never seen a photographer like Chen Xing who could capture the very soul of a dish in a single photo. That spirit, that flavor, even many chefs couldn't reproduce it in real life.
After resting for a bit, Chef Bu regained some strength and stood up. He said to the still-enchanted staff, "I'm heading back. After you finish looking, post your thoughts in the work group, then get off early. Everyone worked hard today."
"Not at all!"
It really hadn't felt like hard work.
More than twenty staff members and several managers had all been stuffed full by Chef Bu and his apprentices. And with another day like this to look forward to tomorrow, the staff were overjoyed. They couldn't wait for their stomachs to digest so tomorrow would come faster.
Delicious food, and free? Like a pie falling from the sky.
Two days passed in a flash.
By 3 p.m. the next day, Chen Xing had completed photography for all the dishes.
The menu had already been planned. Now, with Chen Xing's photos matched to each dish name, the first draft could be made. Once the hotel executives approved the draft, it would replace the old menu with this new one.
That process would take about a week.
But it no longer concerned Chen Xing.
He took his full 28,888 yuan payment, plus a 20,000 yuan red envelope from Chef Bu, and boarded the plane to Dian'nan again.
Twenty thousand yuan in a red envelope.
Two thick stacks of hundred-yuan bills made the envelope strain under pressure it wasn't built to handle.
Zhou Peng was practically dying of envy.
Even though they were close friends, he couldn't help it. He had struggled just to get 20,000 yuan from his mom to fund his future marriage, yet Chen Xing, usually broke, had made nearly 50,000 yuan in just two days.
Like sitting on a giant mountain made of lemons.
In the airport, Chen Xing fiddled with the new mirrorless camera he had just bought.
The first thing he did after receiving payment was search for the nearest electronics mall and buy the first camera of his life.
A Sony A7 iii, full-frame mirrorless camera.
These days, there were four main types of cameras: DSLRs, mirrorless, compact, and film.
Film cameras were for industry veterans. Supposedly, film gave better texture to photos, but it had already fallen behind the times. Few new photographers still insisted on using them.
As for DSLRs, their status was arguably lower than even film cameras now.
Mirrorless cameras, also known as "micro single-lens," replaced DSLR's optical viewfinder with an electronic one. The body was thinner and lighter, and thanks to technology, their functionality was no worse than DSLRs.
Chen Xing thought that, with equal performance, few people would give up the lightweight advantages of mirrorless cameras to buy a bulky DSLR.
So he felt DSLRs were bound to fade away.
Compact cameras were even smaller, small enough to fit in a pocket.
But their performance was significantly worse than mirrorless or DSLRs, so Chen Xing didn't even consider them. Maybe if he had more money later, he'd buy one just to carry around for fun. For now, definitely not.
As for why he chose the A7 iii and not something better?
Obviously, he didn't have enough money.
What other reason could there be?
Chen Xing studied the camera's features all the way onto the plane.
Even though he had knowledge of cameras in his head, remembering it and using it for real were two different things. Chen Xing needed time to compare this camera with what he knew and get familiar with it.
After all, this would be his long-term tool, not a hotel's camera on loan.
Quan Jing glanced over several times.
She really wanted Chen Xing to take a few photos of her. But when she thought about how he had made tens of thousands just photographing food for two days, she didn't want to ask him for such a favor.
Zhou Peng, on the other hand, didn't overthink it and asked Chen Xing to take a few shots.
After boarding the plane, all three of them sat in the same row. Zhou Peng reached out eagerly and said, "Let me see what you turned me into! Come on, come on!"
Chen Xing found his photo and showed it to him.
In the picture, Zhou Peng sat in a KFC fast-food restaurant at the airport, holding a cold Coke, smiling warmly at someone beside him. That look of being in love, there wasn't even a second person in the frame, but you could easily guess he was looking at his girlfriend.
"This looks great! I'm making it my profile pic."
Chen Xing laughed and said, "I thought so too. I'll send it to you later. Quan Jing, take a look at this one."
He flipped through the camera.
The next photo was of Quan Jing. She was doing the same pose as Zhou Peng, holding a Coke with both hands, smiling while chatting with someone beside her, eyes crinkled like crescent moons. Even people outside the screen could feel her joy.
"Wow! That's me!" Quan Jing was pleasantly surprised.
"Yup. Now you two can use them as matching avatars. Tsk, tsk. I said I wouldn't eat your dog food, but here I am."
If these two photos were posted online, lots of couples would probably want to use them as matching profile pics too.
On their own, they just looked cheerful. But together, they screamed sweetness.
"Thank you!" said Quan Jing.
She loved it!
"Don't be so polite."
After taking the camera back from them, Chen Xing didn't stop for the next two hours of the flight. He kept taking photos, sometimes of little airplane decorations, sometimes of flight attendants passing by.
Zhou Peng nudged Chen Xing and whispered, "So? Pretty, right?"
"Very."
"When you fly back, try Sichuan Airlines. You'll see their attendants are even prettier. Southern Airlines is decent, but still a bit behind."
(End of chapter)