Mexican Food Obsessions and Professional Food Photography

Honing in on professional food styling and photography is, without a doubt,  the easiest way to digest the current CMS 170 unit. There has been so much written about the topic - and let's be real, most of us really enjoy gawking at photos of food that looks amazing and delicious!

I am absolutely no exception to the rule, and quite frankly, "food porn" is made for girls like me.

As painful as it is, I fully understand that my culinary adventures will never turn out quite like the beautiful photographs in my cook books - but I am no less in awe of, and OBSESSED with real food. Food that doesn't always look perfectly crafted, but tastes delicious and looks 100% authentic.

In the article we read from The Guardian entitled WD-40 and Microwaved Tampons: Secrets of Food Photography Revealed, the author makes mention of the fact that Mexican food can be particularly difficult to photograph, because similarly colored items on a plate all running together do not leand to a visually attractive photograph.

As a regular consumer and home chef with a bent toward authentic Mexican food, I know first-hand how challenging it can be to present an attractive plate, while remaining true to the authenticity of the cuisine. I am perfectly delighted with a bowl of re-fried beans, but I know exactly what that looks like to those who do not dream about them regularly.

For my Animoto project this week, I chose to compare the photos I have taken of Mexican dishes I have recently enjoyed at two Milwaukee establishments (Conejito's and Cafe Corazon) over the last several months with photos I found online from well-known prepared food distributors and/or stock photos that anyone can download.

I feel as though all of the "tricks" mentioned in the reading materials for this week are very evident, and have a hard time figuring out how it is that the corporations who feature the "stylized" food on their websites don't get into legal trouble for failing to adhere to the guidelines for ethics in shooting/editing photos as outlined on page 144 of White Space Is Not Your Enemy. 

Below is an Animoto video that shows REAL Mexican food I personally photographed, and compares it with professionally styled food that sometimes looks like something I want to eat, and sometimes looks like a plastic prop - like the ones Jim Wend mentioned were very popular during the time he was doing professional photography.

Jim shared a story with us about a shoot he was on for Miller beer when he and his associate actually used a wet-vac to suck beer from a perfectly placed glass, and re-poured the beer over an over to get the perfect shot - never actually moving the glass itself. I couldn't help but think about the strange tactics employed to keep the food in the professional photos I included in this Animoto...did they use a wet-vac on the enchilada sauce to make it glisten "just so" with every frame?