EDITORIAL: Challenge of shooting an object behind a glass

This afternoon, I got an assignment from a local magazine Borneo Talk to do an advertorial spread for their Food section.
The restaurant was White Rajah Restaurant, a rather snazzy joint located within the Regency Rajah Court Kuching vicinity.
The task was to photograph some of the food for a write-up on the restaurant's breakfast and lunch buffet spread, which included both local and international cuisines.
While it wasn't all that difficult to photograph the food, the real test was when I needed to photograph the chefs at work.
The guy you see here is the chef in charge of the restaurant's Chinese Kitchen.
I was short of time, so I tried taking his photo through the glass that separated us. The result was awful, of course... Too many reflections on the glass.
So I decided to use multiple flash... Well now, that's me exaggerating a little there.
Actually, I just used two flash... a simple setting to achieve a simple effect as seen in the photo you see here.
I didn't want to light up the whole scene... I just wanted enough light to show the chef at work... the rest of the background wasn't that much of an importance to me... not in this setting.
I used an SB900 with a Gary Fong light sphere attached to it, and asked another chef to hold it steady for me on one side, behind the glass screen.
On my side, I just used my camera's pop up flash and covered it with a Lumiquest Mini Softbox.
Voila!!! The result of the shoot is as seen here in the photo on this page.
Oh, and I used a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 D AF lens for this one. - Mark