Fake Food

When I began this food BLOG I got interested in improving the quality of my photographs. In addition to photography I became aware of how food is enhanced to make it look appetizing. The food photos in many high-end cookbooks and magazines look delicious, but you would not want to eat many of them, they are fake food. A real pie collapses in the center and is not domed as shown, adding soap suds to fried bacon to look like bubbling grease, the use of heated metal rods to put perfect grill marks on meat, and painting chicken with Kitchen Bouquet to make it look perfectly roasted.

WEB photos are low resolution, so my iPhone is adequate. Lighting is the major photographic issue. A flash is bad, and overhead kitchen lights are not good. Natural light is best and I must learn to deal with shadows and reflections. I will do my best to improve my photos, but they will always be of real, unaltered, and edible food that I have cooked and eaten. Rather than focusing on the glitzy photos of the finished product, I will focus more on documenting the steps required to produce a tasty dish.