Apr 27 2009
Appealing to Many Senses With the Help of Food Photography
Food is made to be savored with the tastebuds. However, the taste of food can’t be communicated over a distance. Food also looks beautiful. 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 artful, well composed food photography. The food photographer takes food, interesting tableware, and light to create an arrangement 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. Pictures aid the imagination in this task. Back in the kitchen, the cook might look at a recipe and say, “I might make this if I could see it.” 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 build their success on good food photography. How often have you seen a women’s magazine that appealed to you with a headline saying, “Lose 10 pounds in 10 days” next to a picture of imaginative cupcakes? That’s a double-whammy for your brain: advice for the parent in you and cupcakes for your inner child. The inside the magazine is stuffed with food photography. One set of pictures illustrates the recipe section of the magazine. These photographs serve the same purpose as those in the cookbook. Then scattered throughout the magazine are the ads. Those that aren’t for the latest fashions are for food. You see the cheese ad with the melty cheese sandwich. This is followed by a salad dressing ad with crisp lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, and onions.
When you look at the menu at a family restaurant, what do you see? These restaurants usually have pictures of their menu items to whet your appetite. These pictures needn’t be as fanciful as recipe illustrations, but they need to be realistic. If you find yourself in a fast food restaurant, you’ll surely see the menu decorating the walls and hanging from the ceiling. These pictures in the restaurant 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 come in for something to eat. These restaurants lure the driver with tasteful pictures of their menu items on billboards. They don’t just serve the purpose of alerting you of a place to stop. They are convincing you to stop in even if you are not hungry.
Good food photography communicates more sensory information than just the visual. It stimulates your senses of taste and smell.