My kitchen is the heart of my home. My friends all like to hang out in there instead of in my more spacious living room.
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My kitchen is the heart of my home. My friends all like to hang out in there instead of in my more spacious living room.
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Food styling, the art of arranging food to look attractive, can be more important than how the food actually tastes.
I'll admit, whenever I serve food onto a plate I start to arrange it in an attractive manner. I think it's something we all do to a certain extent, but I'm used to working with images and I instinctively try to create a balance in the composition.
I started taking photographs in my early twenties, after I was given a professional camera for my birthday. I cultivated photography as a hobby for more than thirty years before graduating to a digital camera, a purchase that coincided with my starting this blog. So naturally, I started taking photos of my own dishes
I was quite pleased with the results until I checked out some other food blogs. I was surprised at the high quality of the images I saw. They all made my mouth water!
I wanted to find out more about how these appetising images are created. As a creative director I'm fully aware of how effective images are when used to help communicate ideas. Images of food can be so powerful they can affect the way we choose what we eat.
How many times have we bought ready meals, basing our decisions solely on the image on the packaging? We order our burgers based on the images on the menu. Often what we are actually served disappoints. We're well aware that food is almost never 'as illustrated', so why do we continue to choose our meals based on what we see on the packaging?
When I first joined social media platforms like FB and instagram, I began to realise how easy it was to judge someone's cooking ability based only on the look of their food posts.
I'm guilty of this myself: if I saw images of a meal that didn't achieve a certain level of technical know-how, I tended to downgrade my estimation of the cook's talents. If the dish didn't look good in the photo, I reasoned, it must not taste very good.
Food styling is not something where good results can be achieved overnight. It's not about which lens to use, or how the food is prepared. Behind the best images are professional photographers and for them, using a camera is more than just a hobby.
The ultimate aim of food styling is to get us to buy the product. Although I'm aware of various tricks of the trade, I was irritated when I found out that, more often than not, whipped cream is actually shaving foam, and that in those glamour shots of milk and cookies, the milk has been substituted with PVA. OK, it stops the cookies dissolving, but how can my humble kitchen-table photography compete?
So I have it. I've found myself negatively judging other people's efforts based on my assumption that good food should also look good.
We rely so much on our visual sense in the perception of food, we often forget that the main sense involved in eating food is supposed to be our sense of taste. So much so that Michel and Albert Roux, founders of the Waterside Inn in Bray, have put up a sign asking diners not to photograph their meals. Michel Roux said: “I'm really getting so upset about people taking pictures. We put up a card at the door saying 'No photos, please'. I mean, what are they doing? Maybe once during the meal you want to take a photo of something because it's unusual. But what about the flavours? A picture on a phone cannot possibly capture the flavours".
There are plenty of websites and blogs offering tips and tricks for shooting the perfect food image. Anyone can learn how, but they should be ready to use shaving foam or motor oil, and bin everything after the shoot.
Although I enjoy taking pictures of the meals I've prepared – and I love the thrill of getting a 'like' – I think it's time to step back a little and stop being a food voyeur. Eating is an experience that ought to be undertaken using ALL our senses. After all, you shouldn't judge a book just by its cover, should you?
If you'd like to improve your food photography skills, here's some useful links:
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AuthorI love cooking, and when it comes to quality I'm quite fussy. Archives
February 2018
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