Food

Thursday September 16th, 2010

If you’ve been paying any attention to the world of delivery pizza, you know that there are stirrings of change in food photography. Domino’s Pizza is getting plenty of attention for its recent ad, which claims that the chain’s new revised pizza does not need stylized and embellished photography to be desirable. The ad is mostly an “exposé” of the complex behind-the-scenes work that once made the pizza look appetizing.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal points out that there has been an overall turn in the industry away from highly stylized and “perfect” images of food towards messier and more “real” photos.

Of course, we have a number of talented food photographers on our site, so I got in touch with just a few of them to see if this really was a significant trend in day-to-day food photography. Even though they generally did see a trend, they pointed out that the Domino’s campaign covered up the fact that “messy” photography is still the result of painstaking work by stylists and photographers. “I don’t think it’s so much less stylized food, just more approachable food,” said Leo Gong, a food and travel photographer based in San Francisco. “People want more natural looking stuff and now the not so perfect looking stuff, but nobody realizes that thats styling an unstylized look. Even if it looks messy, it’s purposely made to look messy.” Lincoln Barbour, who is based in Portland, agrees. “Though the look of food photography appears less styled these days, there’s a tremendous amount of thought and skill going into making that messy shot look tasty,” Lincoln said. “And that’s not easy to do.”

Carefully placed random specks. (Photo by Leo Gong/San Francisco)

Denver-based photographer Jeff Padrick noticed on a recent recipe shoot for Kellogg’s that the client specifically requested that the food seem “accessible” and “not too perfect,” to avoid “intimidating” the viewer. Jeff is optimistic about this shift. “I do think it is a serious trend,” he said, “and I am actually all for it. The editorial food industry has been going this way for a while and I think the advertising food clients are taking notice and moving this way to some degree.”

For Cincinnati photographer Teri Campbell, these changes are due in large part to the growth of bloggers. Many food bloggers have no real training, but they do have decent cameras, and end up showing us “that food can look good without being perfect.” According to Teri, this is because the amateur photography is “more emotional, and I think that emotion is one of the keys to good food photography.”

"No 'crumbs,' but you get the idea someone was just here," says Teri. (Photo by Teri Campbell/Cincinnati)

Teri says people often tell him, “my food doesn’t look like that.” (His answer: “give me a thousand dollars and I’ll make sure it does.”) But for Teri, this illustrates the complexity of food photography, and why even the “messy” shots have to be so carefully stylized:

Food photography has to tell the entire story to just your eyes. When you eat a pizza, you use all of your senses. The way it looks is only a part of that experience, you also notice how it tastes, what it smells like, how it feels in your hand, how the box sounds as you open it. I have to communicate all of that in just two dimensions. Sure, we embellish things sometimes, but I would argue that the overall experience of eating the food will match what you experience when you look at my photograph.

It’s something to keep in mind as you look at food photos and contemplate the new forms of styling and “anti-styling.” As Lincoln Barbour pointed out, “it’s sometimes harder to make a food shot look good messy than clean. There’s a fine line between yum and yuck.”

I'm going to go with "yum" for this one. (Photo by Lincoln Barbour/Portland)

In spite of the complexities of food styling, there are some clear advantages to the spontaneous approach. “It’s really kind of nice that at the end of the shoot these days we actually have some food you could eat,” said Jeff Padrick. “That said, Super Poligrip is still wonderful for holding a salad together!”

-Asad