"food photography" news and stories

One of my favorite food blogs is The Wednesday Chef, written by Luisa Weiss. She mostly cooks and posts recipes from the foods sections in the New York and Los Angeles Times (although the picture of the Fennel and Olive Salad you see above is from Nigel Slater's "Kitchen Diaries"). Her pictures are gorgeous but real, she alerts her readers to any changes she made from the printed recipe and she is always honest about how she feels about the results of her cooking efforts.

Her latest post is particularly appealing to me because in it she tells of the scent memory that a recent trip into a cheese shop triggered, taking her back to childhood visits to a cheese shop in Germany with her mother.

photo by Luisa Weiss

Most of the time, our Food Porn posts here on Slashfood are gorgeous photographs taken by food bloggers of their own creations. However, food porn isn't outside the professional world, either. Photographer Francesca Crescenti takes amazingly beautiful pictures of food, like the Broccoli Pasta above. However, what's even more incredible to me are her still-life shots of kitchen tools. Her photos make everyday things like a whisk or a collection of spoons looks positively elegant. Take a peek. Though her site is not English, a food picture needs no translation.

There may be some debate over whether breakfast really is the most important meal of the day, but it is undeniably one of the best looking.

These aren't the first sticky buns/cinnamon rolls that have been seen here as food porn, but all that really goes to show is that cinnamon buns are one of the most visually appealing breakfast foods that you can find. This is probably the very reason that Santos, the gifted food blogger behind The Scent of Green Bananas, chose to use this tempting breakfast scene as an example of how to work with the limitations of your camera to produce some great photographs. This shot uses natural lighting and is not an extreme closeup, so it could be easily replicated with almost any digital camera. To improve your own photography, try staging shots like this one to capture the best lighting in the room. Just be sure to have a cinnamon bun (or several) to practice on.

Source

That is the title of a great article from blogger, celebrity TV chef and photographer Benjamin Christie.

He opens with "most of us don't have the time to go to great lengths to create the perfect shot, so here are a few ideas, tips and more on how you can achieve your perfect food photo" which about sums up the post - he covers the equipment he uses and the reasons why, the three types of food photography (Close in (food only) and all in focus, Close in with limited depth of field and Table setting elements providing character and a reference situation). Each has a great photograph as an illustration.

He concludes with a few hints in regards to lighting. Worth a read for all budding foodporn image takers.

Source

For those with camera and a penchant for a little piece of foodporn may like to join in with the new themes at Foodography and Still Life With... As it is the start of a new month so new themes have been selected for these two flickr groups.

Foodography has had Sam select Liquid as the theme. Thinking less wine and drink (after all my theme last month was wine bottle and glass) more creative shots of liquidised food, olive oils, sauces, reductions, gravy boats and the like. But of course there is nothing to stop you going the smoothie route or taking pictures of cooling cocktails complete with condensation just to get the taste buds going!

Still Life With... has Food and People as the theme. Something I tend never to include in photos is people. Here perhaps I should get out and take some snaps of my local Starbucks staff or that greasy little man in the kebab van... another great theme to get you snapping!