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What Is Food Porn?

one of the best compliments that anyone can give you when you're taking pictures of food. Is that made me hungry. This is a visceral response. We eat every day. This is part of our lives? This is part of who we are. This is this is essential to our existence. So, if you can tap into that part of this, that's why this this art form is different than any other in photography. We're talking about life sustaining emotional kind of it's got gravitas. Food has gravitas, It maybe so it's food photography. It's good for, you know, without food. We're gon, right? This is why it's so emotional for people. This is why people are so engaged in it. Because you see something and you have a reaction, you have a physical reaction, your stomach growls, I'm hungry. That made me hungry. I love it. And we've kind of used this terminology, which I don't particularly love. I don't love the term food porn. I really don't. I even actually feel embarrassed sometimes putting it as a hashtag on my instagram phot...

os, but it means something, I mean, we have now turned something that's an essential the same way we do with that other word, right? We've turned it into something desirable. There's something about drips and pours and smoke and flames that's all really primal, right? It makes us feel really, really good when we see it and makes us want it, right? And the idea of something like an egg, right? We're all we all start there. Why are we so tapped into this? Because it's just so, it's sexual. It's sensual and it's something that people really, really react to this image in particular, I lead off with when I took this. It wasn't that it wasn't that I was thinking, oh, that drips going to be absolutely perfect. I want to try to make it look good and I know what I want to achieve. But there's something about that one little drip that's just poised that made it perfect. And the way we get this really is you poach the egg, you get the camera ready, you put your trigger release on, you focus it, you pop that yoke and you hope because you're going to do it again and again and again and again until you get it right. And then you're lucky if you're lucky enough to get it when you're editing you. I looked at 1000 of these. My God, we looked at so many of these to get that right one, right? It's sometimes you get it on the first shot and sometimes you got to work on it. But you know, that's the idea is that you know what you want and you go and get it. So the other thing we talk about is that this kind of the way that food kind of makes you feel right? It's like you're in a moment, you're in a moment, like I'm hungry and it's cold outside and what can I what can I do? And I kind of put myself in that place when I'm trying to shoot, you know sometimes the environment is exactly what I wanted to be. This was on a cold afternoon in the studio and I was freezing and I was like I want this to evoke what I'm feeling, I wanted to feel like this is gonna make me feel better today. Again. That's sensual kind of the thing that makes a summer peach, you know, kind of what do you think about biting, It's dripping down your chin, It makes you feel like summer. Right? The interesting part about making photos like this is it takes you by surprise. I mean when I was taking this, I first of all I didn't even have time to filter light. I, we put these on the grill and it was outdoors obviously and that is very, very sharp, harsh kind of daylight that I don't normally shoot with, like what I was doing at that moment was getting my scream ready and getting ready to kind of um balance that light out. And I saw that smoke coming up and I said, well let me give it a shot. And I got in there and I put the camera on a, on a faster shutter and I ripped off like five or six really quick shots and then I moved on with the day, I didn't even think about it until I went back to edit and then I saw that curl and it's just, that's the thing is that sometimes the best things that you find in your photos are the things that you didn't plan. That you who would have thought raw chicken, right? I don't even think about the raw chicken in this picture because my eye goes right to that curl. And that's the thing about recognizing the elements and your shots that are going to be the things that resonate with people. Um, and sometimes, like I said, it's raw chicken on a stick, right? If you think about it from that perspective, it's raw chicken on a stick. But the idea is that, you know, shooting things through the process also, um, is a great way two capture things that aren't repetitive where you start at the beginning and you push your way through and every time you see something beautiful, stop and shoot it. I mean there are times when I'm at the stove in the studio watching what's going on and I'll say stop, run that to the window because I shoot in the studio where the kitchen and the window side or on opposite sides of the room, get it on the table, get it on the table and we'll run it over to the table and I'll shoot it before it's finished, bring it back, finish it and then played it and and dish it out. So there's sometimes the idea that um, everything has to be planned and plotted out. Yes. But there's also an opportunity. sometimes not too This, again, was a situation where I wanted this particular image. I went to this cafe on the corner because I knew the guy who owned the place and I want, I was doing a story about crips and he happened to have that big black traditional, you know, piece of steel. It's this thick and it was dark in that room, really, really dark. And I pushed the camera as far as I could go. And this was before the newer cameras. This is a fairly old image and it's not a great um, technical photograph because it's a little out of focus and it's a little grainy if you blow it up big. But the idea again is that it evokes the emotion of what's happening here. The thing that's great about going to the, to the shop to see this happening is there it's where it is. So sometimes even the great, the non technical photograph, the thing that you didn't get a chance to get the best setting or you have to push it really hard in post production, sometimes it's worth it because the idea is that the composition is what's selling the picture, not necessarily the, the perfection of the technical part of it. So there was a there was a lot of emotion that goes into it. So if you if you personalize your work, you know, taking pictures of my daughter was one of the things that really sparked me to get back into photography. And it was the thing that made me realize that I'm much earlier in my career was much better suited to macro photography because I liked getting really close and filling up the whole frame and looking at really small details and seeing things like that. So, again, you as you personalize your work, take pictures of the things you care about. And when you're able to kind of translate that to something that means something to other people where you can share your emotions through your images, that means, you know, like being a man, you don't have to say much. Alright, you just got almost a whole female audience here. So you gotta know your crowd. Mhm. All right enough about that glowing coals and flames and fire okay from the from the caveman who kind of sparked up the thing and everything, you know, to where we like to sit around and look at the fire either in our fireplace right in the backyard. There's something about it that's really primal. And when you put that and food together, you have a great combination. And we got a couple of pictures here that kind of evoked that um I didn't notice that whisp kind of vapor whisk of that shot until again, much later when you when you because when you're in the midst of this. But the other reason I include this picture is not just about the flames and the and the and the vapor whisk but also the setting but it's also about how did I get in there? Where where was I when I took that shot? Right. Because I think that's the thing that people ask me sometimes when they see this picture. Like how did you get in there? Like where were you? Well that chef is a big guy, he's a lot bigger than me. Um He's the chef at um at bobo in Manhattan and this was like a farm to plate that they were doing up in Clarksville new york and I got over there and I got to know him and I know we were talking and he liked the fact that I was shooting because I wasn't there professionally. I was there as a guest. Um I actually got back in the car, went back, got the camera and came back to the farm because I didn't realize what was going on. I was people like we're gonna go eat ok show up and like you could have told me it was just it was it was, it was idyllic. It looked like like one of those Hillshire Farm commercials which I really like, I want to shoot one of those one day. Um But I said to him, I said, hey can I can I get like right under your arm and I and I nudged him over a little bit and I got really close and he's like yeah whatever you want, whatever you want and I got in and I got that shot and then it was like if you were afraid to do that right, if you didn't feel like you had a report with the person or if you didn't feel comfortable doing that, I would have missed out. So you got to be bold sometimes too. You gotta, you gotta really be the person that says I want to get that shot and go about getting it. Oh ice cream, do you need to say anything about that? Because everyone's got a story in their mind a minute, they see that right, whether it's real or fictional, right? The idea of a dripping ice cream cone is just so evocative of so much of our culture and not just you know, not just uh american culture but western culture in general is that there's just and honestly that picture was something that I waited on, I rebuilt it, I sat there and I waited, I want to wait for it to melt and when it started dripping it was at that point it's shooting fish in a barrel. You know, it's not, it's not hard, You know, but the idea is they'll have the patience to wait for it, you know two and then after that of course you got 30 seconds and then is dead and then it all melts and it's gone. But the idea is that the timing is on and understanding how to how to kind of time out your shoot and know exactly how you want to play it. You know those ones in the back didn't matter so much because I knew they were gonna be out of focus. The one in the front was the last one we placed, set up the camera beforehand, sat there and waited and then let it happen. Just let it happen in front of the camera. Translucency is something that we I really try to achieve a lot with my photos. Um I like when we back light food particularly food that has the ability to have light penetrate through. Um And by doing that you're creating not just a lighting environment but also you're giving another perspective on the food that um you may not normally get you know pushing light through citrus fruits or pushing light through kind of you know viscous liquid and things like that. It really had some like honey and and all those things really just makes, brings out the little bubbles and all the stuff that's there that's really pretty and beautiful and you start to kind of focus on color and shape