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Food photography in UK


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Though the photography used on blogs appears similar to magazine or book photography, the way it is produced makes it rather different. The home cook records what they've made in response to the pleasure (or anger ) they feel towards it and a need to both capture that, then edit it and upload it to a website for immediate viewing. No other opinions affect this process. And as you know, Tim and Austin, this is rarely the situation a commercial photographer will work in.

...

On a blog it's one eye, one opinion, and often the photographer is the author, chef, food stylist and designer "all in one". They are able to record personal discoveries, moments only accessible to an insider, without any distraction. It may not strive towards the stylized ideal that Penn or Hiro aimed for, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

Agreed completely.

Though the phenomenon has spread away from blogs and back into the print media. I've noticed many stylists have felt able to make the leap into taking their own food pictures and both yourself and Alastair Hendy are now making a great job of writing, cooking, styling and shooting your own books.

I would argue that that convergence of skills is very much a post digital phenomenon - though I have to confess that the assertion is based on feeling rather than any objective data.

Someone being able to do all those things well, being a sound investment for publishers and having the profile and personality to hang it all together feels like a very modern development.

By coincidence I was looking at Freson's Taste of France last night while listening to the podcast.

Though the photography is lovely the really noticeable difference is that his pictures are 'still lives'. The viewer is complicit in the belief that this is an artificial and aesthetically agreeable arrangement of objects by an artist.

If I ever see a 'still life', in that sense, in a modern book or magazine, it seems false. Does that make modern viewers more sophisticated or just more cynical? :smile:

Tim Hayward

"Anyone who wants to write about food would do well to stay away from

similes and metaphors, because if you're not careful, expressions like

'light as a feather' make their way into your sentences and then where are you?"

Nora Ephron

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The viewer is complicit in the belief that this is an artificial and aesthetically agreeable arrangement of objects by an artist.

But this applies to every photograph, the moment you frame it in the viewfinder. I used to spend a great deal of time arranging things for the camera, and now I consciously make the effort not to. But the result now is sill a kind of artifice, just less laboured. In the old days (before food took over my life), whether I was shooting a still life cover for an interiors magazine, a fashion catalogue or an album cover, everything went through layers of meetings and decision making. On my books this doesn't happen; on Giorgio's, absolutely. Alastair styles more than I do, and to my mind they're his least successful images. When he takes a more journalistic approach he's remarkable.

It's not the publishers, though. It's a condition we set as authors, rather than a push by the publishers to save money as we're paid photography fees as well.

Why doesn't your blog contain images?

Dan

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The viewer is complicit in the belief that this is an artificial and aesthetically agreeable arrangement of objects by an artist.

But this applies to every photograph, the moment you frame it in the viewfinder. I used to spend a great deal of time arranging things for the camera, and now I consciously make the effort not to. But the result now is sill a kind of artifice, just less laboured.

Point taken.

When he takes a more journalistic approach he's remarkable.

Absolutely

It's not the publishers, though. It's a condition we set as authors, rather than a push by the publishers to save money as we're paid photography fees as well.

Aah! To be in that lucky position :smile: I have to threaten to break legs to get just one fee out of them.

Why doesn't your blog contain images?

A couple of reasons. Firstly, I don't regard it strictly as a blog. Though I use blog software to publish I'm not really involved in the blogging community and I don't invite comments or online input. The model I originally set out to follow was a Creative Commons licensed online column. As I was trying to develop a profile as a food writer, it seemed sensible to publish the column that nobody had commissioned me for yet. I use it as a portfolio of spec pieces, a promotional tool and as the archive for the HTML newsletter.

I chose to do the free subscription route for the newsletter so I could track my audience (too many years in marketing).

Second reason. I stopped taking pictures seriously at least fifteen years ago when I went to the dark side in ad agencies. I only started shooting again recently (inspired, I have to admit, by the examples of Alastair and yourself) and always on the medium-format, film kit that I understood. Now Nikon have finally brought out a camera that will accept my extensive collection of fine old Nikkor glass, I've been able to go digital so I hope I'll have some stuff up soon.

Tim Hayward

"Anyone who wants to write about food would do well to stay away from

similes and metaphors, because if you're not careful, expressions like

'light as a feather' make their way into your sentences and then where are you?"

Nora Ephron

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I stopped taking pictures seriously at least fifteen years ago when I went to the dark side in ad agencies. I only started shooting again recently (inspired, I have to admit, by the examples of Alastair and yourself) and always on the medium-format, film kit that I understood.

I do understand. I didn't take a picture between 1992 - 2002, everything just too expensive and the memory all a bit much. Though I still shoot on film, 6x7 and 35 mm, it's now possible to scan, the film at home, make a sized-tiff and have it printed at snappy-snaps for 60p.

What this means, getting back to your topic, is that it should be possible for anyone to record the food they love, the technique they use, and though this may not create the most dramatic images, they be full of meaning for the reader, explaining just how something is constructed. We should start to see, soon, a different approach to reportage in food publishing where characters right in the middle of situations can be given a camera to record what they do.

regards

Dan

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Personally I find nothing wrong with so-called food porn that so many people seem to look down on.  I think there is a prevailing attitude, especially in this country, that if something looks appealing it should be viewed with suspicion or be regarded as silly or facile.

i'm so with you, GastroChick. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Marlena the spieler

www.marlenaspieler.com

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I'm not sure about the Waitrose pictures, however I have seen the cover with the child on the front and have to say I find it extremely middle-aged and uninspirational.  In fact I find the whole magazine quite dull.  My favourite food magazine in terms of photos and editorial content is GourmetTraveller, I wish that this country could produce something of a similar calibre.

I've always found the more adventurous photographs in WFI to be well worth the cover price alone; I remember a piece from four or five years ago about Lapland where the photography was simply stunning.

The better photographs in WFI remind me of Lepard's small 'reportage' snapshots in the chapter fronts in "Handmade Loaf", lovely pieces that don't look overworked, good honest pictures which steer very far away from the microwaved tampon school of food photography.

Looking into my crystal ball (okay, whisky decanter top), there are going to be a lot more people posting, as Dan says, photos for immediate consumption. Given that good basic digital point-snd-shoots are now widespread, that camera phones are beginning to humble the old Kodak Easyshares of five years ago, and that goodish digital SLRs are no more than a week's income for most of us, are these pictures going to be better? Will the average chimp behind the lens (and I'm one of them, trust me) use this technology to improve the pictures we take?

Edited by culinary bear (log)

Allan Brown

"If you're a chef on a salary, there's usually a very good reason. Never, ever, work out your hourly rate."

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Looking into my crystal ball (okay, whisky decanter top), there are going to be a lot more people posting, as Dan says, photos for immediate consumption.  Given that good basic digital point-snd-shoots are now widespread, that camera phones are beginning to humble the old Kodak Easyshares of five years ago, and that goodish digital SLRs are no more than a week's income for most of us, are these pictures going to be better?  Will the average chimp behind the lens (and I'm one of them, trust me) use this technology to improve the pictures we take?

Whether advances in photographic technology can be said to 'improve' pictures is debateable - most pictures that still make my jaw drop were shot on some pretty elderly kit - but they do change the opportunities to take pictures.

If you compare Fenton's pictures of the American Civil War with any of the photojournalistic coverage of Vietnam you can see how light, portable 35mm cameras with faster lenses made it possible to be inside the events rather than viewing the aftermath.

In a similar way (as Dan points out upthread) the new digital technology puts the camera in a new place. It goes into the hands of experts in other fields, it goes into the kitchen, the studio and the workshop. And lets's not forget that where film-based photography was about making pictures, digital photography has moved beyond and now encompasses publication. The combination of digital camera and computer now gives the picture maker access to an audience. I would argue that this is the real stepchange in the technology - it's like whipping the film back off your Hasselblad and replacing it with a publisher, a printer, a distributor and a chain of bookstores.

There will still be great photographers who shoot pictures and get them published in books and magazines. Many of them will shoot digital and, one could argue, the technology is irrelevant to them. The really exciting area is this new kind of communicative, democratised photography/publishing where vastly broader audiences can exchange ideas and are now able to include imagery.

A string of illustrated postings in which a brilliant chef teaches an adoring audience how to, let us say, make a phenomenal pork pie is an entirely new phenomenon in communication. It sits between lesson, book, correspondence, lecture, article and photo-essay. That it should be available to a global audience of thousands of self-selecting interested parties who have the ability to interact is, frankly, such a paradigm shift in communication models as to be nearly incomprehensible - it certainly is to the old-media.

Will digital help everyone shoot like Irving Penn? No. But if it enables a chef to behave like a cross between Channel 4 and Conran Octopus publishing in the space between his shifts it will have achieved a greater good.

Brillat Savaran said that the discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star. If that's true then a technology which enables a man to improve the pork pie making skills of thousands is truly the wonder of the age. :wink:

Edited by Tim Hayward (log)

Tim Hayward

"Anyone who wants to write about food would do well to stay away from

similes and metaphors, because if you're not careful, expressions like

'light as a feather' make their way into your sentences and then where are you?"

Nora Ephron

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