ON THE FINE ART OF FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY

My buddy Yabu over at Bad Bad Juju has had it up to here with people who gripe about bloggers who post pictures of food.

I’ll admit that food photos - and the people who take them - can be a tad obnoxious.  Plenty of us have been guilty of snapping pictures of our food and drink, and then slapping all of it up on Facebook, Twitter, or (gasp!) our blogs for all to admire.  It’s almost become a cottage industry - lookee!


(OK, this is a fake ad.  But still...)

But in a way, I understand it.  Those of us who post food pictures might be doing it out of braggadocio - Look what I’m eating!  Look what I cooked! - or justifiable pride... or they might simply want to share good times with their friends.  After all, what’s more fun than eating and drinking? (I mean, something you can post about on a family blog.)

In my case, I like to post photos of food I’ve prepared.  There’s a big “Lookit!  I cooked this myself!” component, but there’s also a desire to show off my photography skills and to share good food... for which reason I often include the recipe, either outright or as a link.

Here are a few of my own food-posts, just to give you a taste:

Three Days of Face-Stuffing

Charcuterie for You ’n’ Me

Crimson Tide

Hills: A 100-Word Fantasy

Barbecue in Birmingham, Yet Again

A Better Babka

And there’s the cat-daddy of food posts - it may not have any plastic Tyrannosaurus Rex models, but it does have a couple of spiffy Navy uniforms:

Captain Jack Will Get You Stuffed Tonight

You can always go to my “Comestibobbles and Potaboobles” post category if that ain’t enough for ya.  Hell, I even put a whole book of food photos together.  (What a fucking egomaniac.)

Look: Food, like flowers, is ephemeral.  Flowers fade and shrivel; food is shit the next day.  But let’s celebrate it while we can... and if you don’t want to look at food pictures, I’m sure there are plenty of other sites out there that will offer up your minimum daily requirements of sad-eyed clowns, cats with cute captions, and bloviating rants on the politics of the day.