From the Dimly-Lit Meals Tumblr to Sad Desk Lunch, the internet is now a feast of sad food photography. Why this fascination with culinary c
An old article, but amusing regardless.
First it was James Lileks and the Gallery of Regrettable Food. What were the photo editors on these cookbooks thinking?
I'm well aware the colour quality of old pictures degrades and yellows, to their detriment, but IMO the images on that website can't have looked very appetising even when new.
There are ways to assemble variegated foodstuffs on a plate that looks attractive, and then there are these.
Dimly-lit meals for one and Sad desk lunches are yet more shuddersome antidotes to lovingly-photographed food porn erotica (porn would be messy close-ups of eating it).
However, despite what the article suggests, food photography doesn't need "the highest-spec kit while dangling from light-fittings for just the right angle" to look good.
*****
Using a phonecam while out with your friends in a crowded pizzeria isn't going to give the best results, but then neither is a joyless packed lunch on a rainy Monday in February, even if shot with a $33,000 camera like this Hasselblad, and full studio lighting.
@dduane's hobby site European Cuisines (down for maintenance) did just fine for years with a Sony W17, a compact digicam with a superb Zeiss lens.
Here are Sony shots of an apple upside-down cake made with Beauty of Bath apples from our own tree (they really are pink all the way through) and a quiche Lorraine just out of the oven.
After a while I got a second-hand Nikon D40 DSLR; the money saved on second-hand let me afford an excellent lens, a top-of-the-line flashgun and that neat little flash which is so much better than the camera's built-in one.
Here's the Nikon's take on last year's roast-goose-and-all-the-trimmings Christmas Dinner, as well as bacon (corned beef is the Americanised version) and cabbage for St Patrick's Day.
Now we're mostly using HTC U11+ smartphones whose cameras are not only top-notch but have excellent low-light capability.
This is good, because our lighting has always been mostly natural daylight with occasional flash and reflector-screen assistance.
Here are U11+ images of soda bread done in a cast-iron casserole or Dutch oven, and Geflügelragout (a stew of roast chicken with red wine and lemon) with saffron-pumpkin noodles.
This has become Brightwood Vintner's Chicken in the Food and Cooking of the Middle Kingdoms project, and why not? It's delicious! Here's DD and U11+ in action, and the noodle close-up she was shooting in that pic.
None of the food we shoot is "styled" for photography with varnish for glossiness, paint for cream, machine oil for honey, microwaved cotton-wool for steam and lots of other cunning but inedible trickery.
Our stuff is all for eating - so much so that getting "photograph the food" and "eat the food" in the proper order can sometimes be a struggle.
Like these crumpets, for instance.
You would, wouldn't you?
I nearly did, giving DD conniptions because she hadn't photographed them yet, and the Kerrygold butter was melting Just Right...
In a choice between shooting Have To Eat images and Want To Eat ones, we'll stay on the Want To side of the fence, and if people looking at those pix also Want To take a bite out of their screens, we're getting the job done.
And we're not hanging from the light-fittings to do it... :->
