2 July 08 re: the difficulty of food photography

mb:

My recipe for this week, the sesame soba noodles, brought up something interesting for me that I feel like we need to discuss.

m-c:

Now you've got my curiosity piqued. Discuss away.

mb:

Well, as I was typing up the recipe and compiling all the photographs I found myself searching for one in particular ... a photo I was positive I had taken but couldn't find for the life of me. I'm talking about the photo of the finished product.

After much searching and running over the evening's events in my head, I began to remember NOT taking the photo after all. I remember thinking that it wasn't such a big deal, that I knew there'd be leftover and I'd just take the photo then.

Shows how much I know.

m-c:

I've had exactly the same thing happen. Or I take six shots and then I'm so starved I just assume at least one of them will be OK, eat up all the food, and then find every single shot is shaky-handed blur.

mb:

I find that the hardest part of doing food photography is that I take some pictures but not all, and then have to spend tons of time sorting through everything trying desperately to remember what I was supposed to have photographed but didn't, or even what I was cooking in the first place!

The first photo on this page is a prime example of that. I was making 4 dozen cupcakes for my best friend's birthday party and she asked that some of them be raspberry, so I made her vanilla cupcakes with raspberry whipped cream topping. Well, I thought it would be awesome to take photos of the entire process. You know ... document what an amazing friend I am, maybe use the photos someday in the future as evidence that a bank should give me a loan to start my own cupcake business, whatever. But that picture that you see above is the one and only picture I remembered to take.

m-c:

Oh no!

mb:

Oh no is right. And then, of course, when I was going through my photos later, I had NO idea what that picture was of. It took some serious detective work to figure it out.

m-c:

I'm trying to get everything organized around dates. The camera software dates the photos automatically, so there's nothing for me to remember -- or more likely forget -- about dating them. But I'll come across a photograph whose date I know and try to match it up with the dishes I cooked that day and come up with nothing. Was I making something for some future day? Did I try to make something and it came out so badly I tossed it into the garbage? What was going on?

Or, as you say, the opposite. I'm sure I took a picture of those bologna sandwiches I made for a picnic. I must have. They were great. Where are they?

mb:

And then there are the beautiful photos that I have no use for at the time I took them, so they just sit around on my desktop wasting space. That's what the rest of these pictures are: ones I'm not sure I will ever use except here, for this smalltalk. Oh well.

m-c:

We should throw them in at random in all the list pages, which are noticeably less attractive than the recipe pages.

For instance, the book list. I've just now put a pretty picture of currant stems at the top.

mb:

Good idea.

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