Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Food Porn and Why I Suck at Taking Pictures of My Food

I can't even call it a phenomenon because it's so predominantly featured in the food world on the web be it Food Gawker , Taste Spotting, , Serious Eats, or a random food blog. High quality glossy magazine page friendly photos are everywhere. You eat with your eyes, you eat with your sense blah blah blah. Who the fuck am I kidding, I've got a poorly lit Mancave and a standard issue iPhone 4. How do I compete?  I don't. What I do when I get questions like: What's with the bad white balance? why is there a  blur to some of the photos, is that a dirty dish towel in the background? Shit. I am fucking up your food porn experience.

This is a springboard for me to get writing about food everyday. I'm not trying to screw up the pictures. Why am I focused on words when I could take pretty pictures of my food? You need more good food porn. Great. That's why I listed some links. Go look at those pictures and come back hungry. I'll post a recipe later.

I mean, I cant take good pictures. I'm too impatient. I'm sweating like a pig over my not ventilated stove top salting my fish from high like Thomas Keller told I should and trying to drain this pot of fettuccine that's rolling at a heavy boil. Do I have time to go back to my office and grab the good camera to take stove top pics? Not really. Do I have the lighting to take a picture of my fancy plates? Crap I don't even sauce or garnish pretty enough to compete with the sites listed above.


I am just a sad, lonely, desperate home cooking seeking validation in my craft by posting yellowed, poorly framed photos in a standard issue blog. Will I ever be cool enough to be on Food Gawker? SHould I run out and buy a light rig and a DSLR? How do all these food bloggers make time for these pictures? by the time I eat it's 9:00pm. If I had to setup my shots and double check them before I ate I'd be sleep deprived and hungry til midnight and by that point my food's all cold and my sauce is ruined anyway.  Maybe I'm just too disorganized and too A.D.D. Maybe I need more adderal and a donut to tide me over until I've got a good picture or two.

Maybe there's a blog dedicated to taking pictures of food for your food blog that could queue me in on the proper angles and lighting to use when shooting my burger.  If I go that far maybe I should learn how to write a recipe properly and step it out better than I  do. Crap. When did this become so much work?

What's a bachelor chef to do when food blogging cuts into bar and girl time? Wait. Is that it? Do food bloggers go out to bars and have girls they date? Do they have full time jobs that don't deal with food? That's it. That's my eureka moment. I have too much other crap going on. No wonder I'm not cooking out of the French Laundry cookbook. I'm busy as hell. And I'm a child support paying bachelor which means I can't afford a fancy DSLR and a lighting rack and godamnit that's why you are gonna get yellow pictures and subpar directions because sometimes I'm pounding out some long-winded rant of a blog in my office in between setting up someone's email account, trouble shooting a network issue, or reinstalling printer drivers.

This whole busy, working bachelor thing has me cramming in 5 minutes of writing between windows updates and computer restarts. All I wanna do is pop a bottle and sear some foie gras but I'm drinking Miller Light cans and eating yesterday's Carnitas in new and inventive ways... I'm making a quesadilla tonight instead of tacos!

I 'm starting to really enjoy thinking about things i can write about entrees I can prepare, food topics to discuss, and shenanigans I can inspire. I'm working on all the organizational stuff, the photos, and the way the blog is setup too. I'll even work on the way I prepare recipes and post them here to.



okay, really I'm just jeakoius that I can't afford a DSLR and have fancy place settings and a good idea for photography. How can some of these people have lives? Crap. Someone buy me a camera or come over and do all that shit while I'm cooking and plating. k? Thnx bye.

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