Lesson #10: How to Shoot Your Food

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With a camera, I mean...

In lieu of my last post regarding shooting food, I thought I would take another approach...

ahhhhhh..... Food Photography.

For the last few months, I have been taking more photographs of my food than ever before, which is funny considering that I have ALWAYS taken pictures of my food since I began in this industry.

I was enlightened to the fact that there are companies out there who take advantage (in a good way) of the fact that there are chefs like me who like to have memories of their creations by way of the photograph.

I do food photography for a Bauscher Tafelstern, a company that makes fine porcelain china for high end restaurants.  the fancy shmancy plates you would be afraid to use at home.

It is true that we eat with out eyes first..... so it seems fitting that putting beautiful food on a beautiful plate would double your pleasure.... except when the food on the plate is NOT really food at all... but rather some chemical incarnation that resembles food.    Take for example the above photograph of ice cream.... unless the photographer was in a chill blaster while shooting pictures of this crazy cone, there is no way that ice cream would have stayed put... without a drip or drop of ice cream on his lens...
I have heard that Crisco makes wonderful "ice cream" when needed to last under the hot lights of the studio.
mmmmm a mouth full of crisco, now, doesn't that sound delicious!

Or how about the cover of Gourmet where drawing a picture of food was the only option?  For all you know, that may actually be a wisp of cigarette smoke that they drew considering that up until the last couple of decades, it was common place to have cigarette ads in every food magazine, as a reminder that you WILL need a digestive after eating what is being sold to you as 'food'.

And Gel Cookery?  mmmmm.... gel.

While I was a Chef Instructor at The Culinary School of the Rockies, a man dropped off cartons upon cartons of old magazines he had been collecting since the 1960's... there was Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Food Arts (even the November 2002 that I was in!), Chef magazine, Pastry Arts, and many many more.

I thought it would be interesting to have my students do a project on Then and Now of culinary magazines... and wouldn't you know, many of them chose the differences in food photography then and now... it was Funny to see how much food has changed, but also to realize that until we had all the chemicals we use today for shooting food, that what we were seeing was probably, actual food!  go figure.

The photographs above are of some of the food i have shot for Bauscher...
the Ballotine of Rabbit?  (it COULD have been a chicken leg... i'm just sayin'.....)
the Fried Green Tomatoes?  (cold as cold could be... and not crispy any more)
the BLT?  two day old bread you could knock someone out with.

there is nothing that my archaic FujiFilm Digital camera wont make look good... IF it is on Macro.... otherwise, the pictures ain't worth shit.