Try food photography!
If you thought portraiture was difficult, think about how perishable hot foods are. When you photograph it, you’ll want it looking fresh, happy, steaming, and appetising. A normal photo shoot - where you photographs something to perfection - takes a few hours, but the food will only remain good-looking for about 10 minutes at the most.
So what do you do? God knows, I’ve never tried. But my new friend L over at Still Life With laid down the gauntlet…
This month, I got inspired by Chez Pim’s post a week ago about “the ugliest food photo ever.” It’s stunning that a professional actually published this photo of Tuna Tartare in the New York Times, taking what sounds like a decent recipe and making it look just awful.
Of course, because this was a food article in the NYT, it also included a recipe. The challenge is obvious: Make the food (see, I knew there would be a DIY element to this, even though it is a food DIY rather than a photography DIY), and then take a photo that doesn’t look disgusting.
Read the challenge over at L’s blog, and then get cracking! If you get any good results, tell her, and me too!
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Insights, suggestions and comments
I do my own salad recipes, assemble and photograph them. They are a little different and the theme os local South African with colonial and indigenous African influences and a connection with we had with the Eastern trade routes, so what we have is an African / Eastern fusion of nutty flavors, exciting textures and the spicy aromatic ingredients that make Eastern foods such a taste bud sensation.
I constantly have a need to cover costs and would like to know if there’s a market for these pictures and who I should approach.
Regards
Derek
Cape Town
South Africa
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