the garden slug

Learn How to Shoot Like the Pros. And by Pros we mean Professionals. But you knew that.

Hansel Tan (yep, the dude pictured above with a cow on his t-shirt) is a veteran tutor, self-taught photography enthusiast & fellow slugphile. If you bump into him here at TGS (or anywhere for that matter), just say “Hi” and ask about photography stuff hokay? — [[don't say "Hey aren't you that dude in the cow t-shirt?"]]

Anyway. He will most happily discuss bodies & lenses with you over a meatball pasta. <– We’ve named the pasta after him. True story.

But there’s only so much photography knowledge one can impart over a meatball pasta, right? Right.

So. If you have a dSLR & have always wondered what those fiddly buttons & settings are for — Hansel is conducting two runs of “Shooting like the Pros – basics of dSLR photography” right here at The Garden Slug.

Hansel takes a systematic, perhaps almost scientific, approach in learning the fundamentals of photography.

Classes will be over 4 hours (2 hours weekday + 2 hours weekend) and there will be 2 runs of the class.

click on image to enlarge

Shooting Like the Pros! – Basics of dSLR Photography
Venue: The Garden Slug
Dates:
• 15 November (Mon) 7-9pm || 20 November (Sat) 3-5pm

Cost: $90
Light refreshments provided by TGS.

Registration: E-mail hanshoots@yahoo.com to sign up.

For further enquiries, contact Hansel directly via e-mail, mobile 9616-6629, Twitter and/or Flickr.

This is José (pronounced ho-say) our Operations Supervisor, a.k.a. Handsome José, a.k.a. Mr Muscles.

José’s been with us for over a year now. He is soft-spoken, well-mannered and very diligent. And did we say hemsem?

Before becoming a Slug, José used to be crew on a cruise ship. He likes photography. And animals. And long walks on the beach.

Truth be told, hemsem or not, animal-lover or not, we hired him because of his muscles alone, shallow little Slugs that we are.

José resolved to diminish our shallowness. “I’m not just all-muscle-no-talent you know!” he proclaimed (we’re totally making up this bit). Slowly but surely, José showed us how much he loved to flambé. (we’re not making up this bit)

At home.

At work.

José can flambé all day.

One day we said, “Hokay José, we know you’re good with the flambé. We’re sorry for being such sorry little shallow little Slugs. But now you gotta show us something more. Can you make pretty little desserts?”
(This is where the “next level of Samurai Sluggery” bit comes in, as per the title of this where-is-all-of-this-leading-to post).

Being a muscle-y gentleman of good upbringing, he took up the challenge.

Not only did José bury himself in dessert-y research, he made sure it looked good, tasted good (we all endured enjoyed quite a few rounds of “taste tests” – perks of our job!) and that the entire process is transferable to other Kitchen Slugs. We guided him on the costing and marketing aspects (shameless advertising: if you’re considering a career with us, we will impart you all our secret Kung Fu Sluggery too! After you complete the prerequisite two-month training regime, of course).

On top of everything else, José even took it upon himself to make his own food pr0n.

And so, we present the result of José’s hard work: *jeng jeng* the Apple Cranberry Streusel.

We’ll be featuring the apple cranberry streusel as one of our dessert specials for a month.

At the end of April, we will be measuring the success of José’s creation.
Among other things, we will be taking your feedback into consideration.

If José’s Apple Cranberry Streusel does well, two things will happen:
• we will make it a permanent item on the menu, and
• we will make it a permanent item on the menu.
(actually José gets a little reward but we’re not allowed to talk about it here).

It is made of 15 secret ingredients. Guess ‘em all correctly & you could win yourself a pair of Apple Cranberry Streusels, each comes with a humongous dollop of vanilla gelato. Just like that, no catch.