Food Photography Converts Sight into Taste
Food is made to be savored with the tastebuds. However, the taste of food can’t be communicated over a distance. Food also has a beautiful appearance. This appearance can often stand in for the taste for the purpose of attracting people. The food photographer is the artist who can convey a sense of the taste of the food through original, well composed food photography. The food photographer takes food, interesting dishware, and light to create a still life that highlights the freshness, juiciness, plumpness, and bright colors to make the viewer’s eyes see flavor and smell aroma. The world of product photography is a world of the five senses.
A cookbook’s sales are enhanced by photographs of each recipe. Cookbooks are purchased in bookstores, far from the aromas and flavors of the kitchen. With just the list of ingredients and directions, the purchaser must use her imagination to mentally turn a list of ingredients into a flavor. Photograohs spark the imagination in this task. Back in the kitchen, the cook might read a recipe and say, “I might make this if I knew what it is supposed to look like.” If the cookbook is illustrated, viola, there it is. And in the end, the cook can tell without tasting whether the culinary masterpiece turned out as it should.
Magazines make their living from good food photography. How often have you seen a women’s magazine that sold itself to you with a headline saying, “Lose 10 pounds in 10 days” next to a picture of imaginative cupcakes? That’s a double-barreled attack on your brain: advice for the parent in you and cupcakes for the kid. The inside the magazine is stuffed with food photography. One variety of photos illustrates the food section of the magazine. These photographs serve the same purpose as the cookbook pictures. Then scattered throughout the magazine we find the ads. Those that aren’t for the latest fashions are for food. You see the add for cheese with the melty cheese sandwich. This is followed by the ad for salad dressing with crisp lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, and onions.
When you open the menu at the casual restaurant, what do you see? Menus in casual restaurants usually have pictures of their menu items to set your mouth to watering. These pictures needn’t be as imaginative as magazine pictures, but they need to be realistic. If you are in a fast food restaurant, you’ll surely see the menu decorating the walls and hanging from the ceiling. These pictures on the menu or on the wall also serve a more serious purpose. They allow people with disabilities to place their order by pointing to the dish that they want to eat.
Fast food restaurants want to make the driver on the highway hungry enough to stop in for something to eat. These restaurants lure the driver with appealing pictures of their menu items on billboards. They don’t just serve the purpose of informing you of their location. They are convincing you to stop in even if you are not hungry.
Good food photography conveys more sensory information than just the visual. It stimulates your senses of taste and smell.
