Taking a quick snapshot of your meal at restaurants has become a widespread pre-meal ritual in recent years. People often like to keep a memento of the food they eat, and perhaps share that image with others online as well.
But if you're a foodie blogger and/or photographer in Germany, you might want to think twice the next time you pull out your camera: your simple photo could constitute copyright infringement.
Camden, London-based commercial still life photographer Piotr Gregorczyk likes to play with food and gravity. One concept he has focused on for a number of recent projects is the idea of showing various food dishes flying through the air as they come together on a plate or in a bowl.
Camera apps these days already have the ability to analyze your scenes before you shoot them, but what if they could analyze your food before you eat it? That's what Google researchers are working on: they're trying to teach a computer to calculate calories from ordinary snapshots of food.
A restaurant and winery in Israel made headlines recently after designing special plates specifically for diners to shoot Instagram photos. It seems restaurants in the US are jumping into this trend as well.
While it's not going so far as to fashion new dishware, Chili's is making changes to its dishes in order to improve how they look in Instagram snapshots.
This is a real, non-manipulated photo of 98 different foods cut into perfectly little 2.5cm cubes. It was created by Netherlands-based design studio Lernert & Sander at the request of the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant for a special issue on food.
If you can't help but snap a smartphone photo before eating a meal, there's a restaurant in Israel that has a new concept designed just for you. The Tel Aviv restaurant Catit and Carmel Winery have teamed up for a new project called Foodography. It's a new meal experience that features newly designed plates that help you shoot quality food photos with your smartphone.
One of the hottest food photographers on Instagram in the past couple of months is an anonymous user who goes by the name Chef Jacques LaMerde. It's not the quality of the photos that's attracting attention, but rather the subject matter. Each of the shots shows cheap junk food arranged to look like the artistic plates found at high-end restaurants.
Actor TOMMY_XPENSIVE created this clever short Vine about people who don’t start eating …
There are an estimated 3 million people in the United States who have stockpiled food and supplies in preparation for the end of the world -- people known as "doomsday preppers."
Photographer Henry Hargreaves recently turned his camera on these individuals for a new photo series, creating a series of images showing survival meals the preppers would eat in the event of the end of the world.
Remember that Taiwanese machine that can print a photo of your face onto the foam of a latte? Here's something along the same lines that's just as quirky: there's a new printer that can cook a photo of your face into a pancake.
Approximately 40% of food is thrown out in America each year. This amounts to roughly $165 billion (with a ‘b’) worth of food, which could feed half of the 50 million Americans who struggle to put food on the table.
It’s tough statistics like these that inspired photographer Henry Hargreaves and his friend and food stylist Caitlin Levin to create the series Power Hungry: a poignant set of photos that illustrates the inequality between the rich and the poor by comparing what each class's meals have looked like throughout history.
When it comes to food photography, particularly beverages, one of the most difficult things to capture is steam. Not only do the drinks not stay warm for very long, but the steam is often nearly transparent and hard to catch on camera.
Second to actual food, there's nothing more appetizing than feasting your eyes on some beautiful food photography. Perfectly-crafted meals with just the right amount of sauce and the perfect garnish all contribute to the mouth-watering photography we come across.
This series from Australian photographer T.Q. Lee, however, is going to require a second look. Because if you look closely, you'll quickly realize that these are not the kinds of meals you want to sink your teeth into.
When we think of recipes, more often than not it’s a book or scrap piece of paper, adorned with stains from the ingredients written down on it. Preperation, suggestions and cook time are also present, but almost always in the form of text.
What would happen if someone were to flip the idea of a recipe on its head, instead turning a piece of paper into a visual hierarchy of the ingredients and components needed to create the meal? Berlin based designer/art director Nora Luther and photographer Pavel Becker have an answer for us in the form of their series, Recipes.
There's a growing concern among many in the industry that photography is having a harder and harder time putting food on the table, but that certainly wasn't the case at one London pop-up restaurant last week where patrons were actually allowed to pay in hashtagged Instagram photos.
I hope you don't mind enjoying a bit of eye candy on your Tuesday evening, because that's what you're going to get with this video. At the direction of creative agency, Proximity BBDO Paris, coffee brand Carte Noire has a beautiful new video advert out that will tease your senses to no end.
Sorry, Mom, but playing with your food rocks. Especially if you do it with the imagination and exacting detail that French photographers Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle have poured into their series MINIMIAM.
Believing the world cares what you had for lunch may still be a symptom of narcissism, but a recent study seems to indicate that it could at least be a useful form of narcissism.
The study, which was conducted by marketing researchers at Brigham Young University, found that the more time people spend looking at pictures of food, the less interested they become in actually eating that same foods. Results were published recently in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Nothing makes a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee, or in this case, a baked potato, look more warm and appetizing than a beautiful cloud of steam. Immediately, your taste buds think of a hot, comforting meal, and your nose can almost sniff the fresh-from-the-oven smell.
Annoyed at people who have a habit of snapping a quick food photo before every meal? There might be a scientific explanation for why some of them do so: scientists have found that that rituals such as snapping a quick food pic may actually help make eating more pleasurable for the eater.
With the help of food stylist Charlotte Omnes, New York still life and food photographer Beth Galton put together an interesting series of photos that shows what prepared and packaged foods look like in cross section.
If you make your money unscrupulously as an identity thief, you might want to refrain from sharing about your life through photographs online. Two identity thieves in South Florida found that out the hard way earlier this year after they were busted thanks to an Instagram photograph of food.
When musicians sign contracts to perform in major concerts, their documents often contain riders (more commonly known as addendums). These are a series of special requests made by the band or musician, and outlines specifics of what they're expecting when they arrive.
Photographer Henry Hargreaves noticed that riders often contain strange requests for the foods and drinks requested, so he decided to turn the requests into a photo project that offer a glimpse into the lives of famous musicians.
One of the stereotypes that has become associated with Instagram users (and smartphone shooters in general) is that they're obsessed with snapping photos of their food. YouTube channel Hungry decided to see how people would react when this obsession is taken too far. They sent a Instagram photographer to random strangers and had him ask if he could photograph their food. Cameras were placed nearby to document their reactions to the strange request.
Norwegian artist and photographer Ida Skivenes has made a name for herself on Instagram for her playful photographs of food. While most people may attempt to make their food look photogenic and/or appetizing in photographs, Skivenes chooses to go a different route: she views her plate as a canvas and her food as her medium. Skivenes regularly creates artworks on her plates using her foods.
Hunger Pains is a very... different series of portraits by NYC-based photographer Ted Sabarese. For each of the photographs, Sabarese asked his model one simple question: "What are you craving at the moment?" He then took the food described, had them turned into clothing items, and photographed the models wearing the things they'd like to eat.
Minneapolis-based art director David Schwen has been generating a lot of buzz lately for his photo project "Pantone Pairings." Shared through his Instagram feed (@dschwen), the photos are recreations of Pantone color swatch pairings done with complementary foods of the same colors.
Nashville, Tennessee-based food photographer Kyle Dreier has a curious project titled Pairings. The main theme of the photographs can be summarized with the questions: "What food really go well together?" and "What are the stereotypical food pairings?" Dreier finds a good and a drink that are commonly consumed together, binds them together with some string, and shoots a photo of the pairing.
A new piece over at The New York Times is bringing to light an issue that, to be honest, we hadn't realized had gotten so bad. Apparently, amateur food photography is out of control, forcing many restaurants to begin implementing bans or other photo related policies.
A week before Christmas last month, Leica launched a contest to spread some holiday cheer. Instead of asking its fans to make photographs, however, the company asked them to bake cookies and cakes.
The words "grandma's cooking" often elicits warm feelings and pangs of nostalgia in people, as they're reminded of delicious meals prepared by their grandmother's loving and experienced hands. Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti wanted to learn what these memories are for people in different cultures and contexts, so he set out to document grandmas and their dishes in countries all across the globe. The result is a project titled "Delicatessen with love."
In certain countries around the world, death row prisoners who are about to face execution are offered a special last meal to eat. Authorities do their best to accommodate the special food requests, and these choices are often published to the media after the execution is carried out.
Photographer Henry Hargreaves decided to do a photo project to document what these last suppers comprised and what they might have looked like. He looked up the requests of some of history's most notorious executed criminals, recreated those meals, and photographed them. The project is titled "No Seconds."
By now, you've probably heard the sad news: Twinkie maker Hostess announced last week that it plans to shut down and sell off all its assets. To pay tribute to the popular -- and not-so-good-for-you -- snack cake, here's an interesting project photographer Dwight Eschliman shot a while back, titled, "37 or So Ingredients."
"Cerealism" is a project by Phoenix, Arizona-based photographer Ernie Button that features clever photographs of common cereals. He comes up with various scenes inspired by the shape and textures of the cereals, and then uses the cereal pieces as props. Some turn into bales of hay in a landscape, while others become fish in a simple fish bowl.
Yep, you read that title correctly. Vegetable Weapons is a photo project by Japanese photographer Tsuyoshi Ozawa. Since 2001, Ozawa has been traveling to various countries around the world, photographing young women holding make-believe firearms constructed using vegetables and other foods.
Photographer Michael Bodiam and set designer Sarah Parker were recently commissioned by NOWNESS to shoot a project called "A Day on My Plate: Athletes' Meals". The goal was to document Olympic athlete meals, but with a twist: instead of standard perspectives, the massive amounts of food were placed onto oversized place settings created with laser-cut MDF, cardboard and paper. Parker says,
I wanted people to be able to draw direct comparison between the diets, and to produce something quite playful that subtly hinted at the sport each athlete participated in.
See if you can pick up on the "subtle hints" and guess the sports behind the meals (answers at the end).
There's a reason that most of the foods you buy never look like the photos used to advertise them. Food photographers and stylists have all kinds of random tricks up their sleeve for making food items look picture perfect. Here's a list of various household products that are commonly used to make dishes look more appealing. A warning, though: you might lose your appetite.
Big Appetites is a project by photographer Christopher Boffoli that features miniature people living in a world of giant food. The subjects are seen mining for strawberry seeds, chopping up giant blocks of chocolate, and lobster wrangling. Each of the figures (meant for miniature train models) are hand-painted with meticulous detail.
Cocoagraph is a Philly-based chocolate company that turns customer photos into Polaroid-style chocolate bars. It's a fun and tasty way to make your photos a treat for the eyes and the mouth.
Unlike the fabulously rich, those living at or under the poverty line in countries around the world have to make tough choices regarding what they eat on a daily basis. "The Poverty Line" is an ongoing project by photographer Stefen Chow and economist Lin Hui-Yi that shows how much food people living at the poverty line in various countries can buy.
The photos above show the different options in China, where 26,880,000 people live on ¥3.28 ($0.49) per day. Each image shows what one poor person can buy in one day.