Beads of dew on the tomatoes? Get real!

Have you ever found yourself daydreaming about being in a totally different line of work, one that nobody would ever think that you would pursue? For me, I often wonder what it would be like to be a food photographer. It’s pure fantasy, since I have no experience in the field of photography and can’t take a good picture to save my life. Nevertheless, when I see food commercials on television, I am taken in by the artistry, the keen attention to detail, and quite frankly, the unreality of it all.

Take hamburgers for instance. The typical Wendy’s or Hardee’s commercial depicts a piping hot burger, steam flowing off of the just-cooked patty. The patty is topped, of course, with the freshest of vegetables heaped high—so fresh, in fact, that, if you look closely, you will find that there are drops of dew still on the slice of tomato. Drops of dew still on the tomato? Are you kidding me? By the way, in many instances this is because all of the vegetables have just splashed through a makeshift fresh waterfall in slow motion (on their own volition, no less). All this is topped with a glistening, freshly baked bun. It looks awesome, but really, when is the last time you bought a burger that looked anything like this in a fast food restaurant?

The other thing I notice is that the burger is always filmed in extreme close-up, giving us the impression that it is big enough to feed one of the figures on Mount Rushmore. This is particularly funny when fast food places are advertising their “Value” or “Dollar” menus. “The new double bacon cheese deluxe bacon bacon burger for only a buck,” they say, while we see a mouth-watering burger that looks like it could feed a family of six. When we get to the restaurant, however, we find out exactly what a dollar buys us. Nevertheless, the photography is outstanding and impresses me.

Another area that fascinates me about food photography is the category that I call, “That will really make a mess, won’t it?” A good example is almost any beer commercial. They depict the frothy head of beer overflowing out of the glass, spilling out all over the sides. It looks great, but now you have sort of a mess on your hands. Sticky glass, sticky table, and sticky hands that smell like beer. How attractive.

My favorite example of the “That will really make a mess” category, though, is Red Lobster. The next time you see a Red Lobster commercial, notice how a person is depicted delicately taking a piping hot, steaming chunk of succulent lobster out of its shell, then forcefully immersing it into a small bowl of melted butter. As the person does this, the butter goes flying out of the bowl in all directions in semi-slow motion. Of course, the commercial cuts to the next scene before we can see the consequences of the aesthetically pleasing butter splash. I have often had the urge to try this myself when I am at a seafood restaurant, but I know I’d get in big trouble. Butter would get all over the table, on my wife’s dress, in our beverages, on the floor, and possibly onto the people sitting nearby. But boy would it be cool.

I could go on and on, because there are so many good examples of this (like maybe the Rembrandt-like application of garlic sauce to the pizza crust in a recent Domino’s commercial). You get the picture. So if you’re ever wondering what I would do if I had to do it all over again, just think of the fabulous, fantastic world of food photography.