Foodiosyncrasies

NAGPUR: It’s a comment that immediately puts a smile on your face. A ‘wow!’ from friends and family is a big reason we post stuff on social media platforms. Just how big is this phenomenon? The photo-sharing website Instagram alone has aggregated a whopping 2.40 crore searchable posts for the #foodporn hashtag, according to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald.
The city’s foodies as well home cooks have taken to Facebook and Instagram in a big way to share their food experiences. Award-winning toy designer Suhasini Paul, who grew up in Nagpur and is currently based in Noida, frequently posts pictures of her culinary creations on Facebook. “The appreciation is quite encouraging. Another reason is that by posting food pictures, you can tempt your friends to come over and spend time with you,” she says.
To most of us, food brings memories and associations from childhood. Paul is no different. “We stay away from our hometown. This is a good medium to share with family what food we are having. They feel happy that we are having traditional food,” she says. Indeed, many of the food photos that Paul — a Maharashtrian married to a Bengali — has posted on Facebook are of rassa patodi, koshimbir and sabudana khichadi, a definite wink to her roots.
Maharashtrian cooking is just one of the many loves of Reshmi Arunkumar, 27. A Malayali housewife, she loves rustling up dishes with eclectic influences for her husband and his friends. “I get a lot of ideas while watching cookery shows,” she says. Although not trained in photography, she picks up many tips on presentation from TV shows. “The dish has to look perfect in all ways,” she affirms.
Both Paul and Arunkumar say that because of food photography people have begun paying extra attention towards the look of the dish. “Most of us want to put our best foot forward. Besides, there is social policing happening,” Paul says, drily.
She, however, conscientiously avoids taking pictures of food served at a restaurant. “I should respect the chef’s creativity,” she says. “And use mine while making my version of the dish.”
Akash Prasad, the head chef from Zuree, has a different reason for not clicking food pictures. “I love to appreciate the flavour of a dish, which constitutes the look, aroma, taste and mouth feel. Eating is the most enjoyable part for me rather than clicking pictures,” he explains. But he agrees it’s a trend.
Many people in the food industry cringe at the less-than-perfect results of the impulsive food photographs diners click at restaurants. Restaurateur Aditya Nanivadekar says the extreme close-ups may look all right on phone screens, but on the enlarged view of computer monitors they sometimes seem “off-putting and unappetising.”
However, there are some that find even professional food photography, especially images used in advertisements, unappealing. Paul is one of them. “I don’t feel like having coffee when I see, for instance, a girl is licking the froth in the advertisement. It looks so plastic-ey. But the pictures which I post or any other friend posts (on Facebook) are tempting to me. Because I know it’s real and advertisement is fake.”
And therein lies the biggest secret of food photography.
It’s ironical that something that is designed to make to get an instant food craving may very well be inedible. Adman Sanjay Arora recalls an ice-cream shoot he did for a media campaign in 1988. “The red syrup was toothpaste. And the whipped cream twirled on the side,” he says, “was shaving foam sprayed straight out of a can.”
Of course, not all food photography comprises such a level of chicanery. In the promotional photo shoot for Zuree, chef Prasad recalls how the gravy for a lamb dish had to be made extra thick to make its flow manageable. In the same shoot, the molten chocolate that is supposed to ooze out when you dig into a dessert was added on later to achieve a more photogenic impact.
Food stylists often employ some simple yet secret techniques to make a dish look tempting. For instance, the steam that evokes the feeling of piping-hot freshness is often produced either by nebulizers and small fog machines or microwaving wet cotton balls (hidden behind a dish or props) that can emit steam for several minutes.
A variety of domestic items find utility in food photography. Glycerine is used by itself to add a lovely sheen to a fruit or added to water to create the condensation effect that is crucial in images of cold beverages. The texture of overcooked meat is often compared to that of old boots but, paradoxically, something actually used on boots — brown shoe polish — is sometimes used to simulate the perfect sear on a piece of meat.
Marketers see this as craft rather than deception. This is because, in the food photography universe, looks matter. Photographers and stylists have compulsions. The strobe lights used to illuminate up a shot give off a lot of heat, making use of many delicate food items unviable. Completely cooked food may be tasty, but for the beholder, it may not be beautiful as it may lose its freshness too soon; hence the strategy to use undercooked food in food photographs. In a nutshell, to achieve a gorgeous look, sometimes just food just isn’t good enough.
“Ultimately, the average consumer isn’t seeing it as something artificial,” says Arora who sums up saying, “If it looks good, it may not be too good. If it looks bad, it’s definitely good.”
Think about that the next time you drool over that picture of an extra cheese pizza!