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Over the course of four days in February, while photographing an assignment for the April 2011 edition of Malaysian Airlines' Going Places inflight magazine, I visited eight restaurants at Singapore's Dempsey Hill.

Formerly the British army barracks and the old Central Manpower Base National Service Enlistment Centre, Dempsey Hill's 18 blocks of colonial conservation buildings have recently been restored and converted into more than 40 bars, restaurants, art galleries and retail outlets.  In just a few short years, Dempsey Hill has been transformed into one of Singapore's most popular drinking, dining and leisure destinations.

My brief for Going Places was to visit eight of Dempsey's dining establishments, each specializing in a different cuisine -- Mexican, Spanish, Thai, Swiss, Indian, Japanese, Australian and Singaporean -- and photograph the interiors, a handful of their most popular dishes and a few of their staff.

Of course, making portraits of the chefs, servers and bartenders at the restaurants was the most enjoyable part of the assignment for for me; meeting these people and having only a few moments to make each of them feel

comfortable, and then capturing in a single frame a little piece of their personalities, is a challenge I relished.

This is a collection of my favourite portraits that I made over those few days.  If you see any of these faces the next time you are around Dempsey Hill, please tell them I said hello.

See more of my portrait photography on my website.