Photographing one's food trend: Threat or Menace?

To me it’s boring. I tried another site where you posted a pic a day of yourself. I dropped out after a few months.

My friend started a blog so he could take pictures of his food, or just post pictures he finds. And then talk about it.

It’s a stupid phenomenon.

I don’t see the big deal. This is no different, in my opinion, than taking pictures of anything else that one enjoys. I don’t see how this could be considered sick self-indulgence when compared to porn, or… Well… Like I said, anything else.

Photos of their food? Are you serious? What a load of pretentious crap. This is yet another folly of indulgence and ascribes to the philosophy that you can’t fully enjoy yourself if people don’t see you doing it. What pretentious crap.

The reactions so far, are extremely bizarre to me. Do you take pictures of your family so that other people can enjoy them, or do you do it for you? Do you paint, draw, write, express opinions for your enjoyment, or for the sake of someone else?

This, to me, is literally no different. Someone takes a picture of something that they highly enjoy. So… What? The people that loathe this must really hate porn. They must not belong to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Myspace or any other site. They must not take pictures of anything that they enjoy.

How can I possibly photograph every meal? Gazing at my navel absorbs too much time to allow for such frivolity.

I’m not saying I hate it. I just find it yawningly boring. I don’t care if someone else does it, so long as I’m not asked to sit through the PowerPoint presentation of “My Year with Food.”

Why waste the time taking a picture. I much prefer consuming my meal to looking at it. If you are a food critic or a cook book editor, it would make sense. Otherwise last one to the table gets none.

@DrasticDreamer I guess I find something obssessively narcissistic about this, just as I find much of Twitter and Facebook and (dare I say it) Fluther narcissistic. If you have so much extra time and money to spend doing this, how about donating some to end world hunger? I agree, it is a symbol of much else that is worng with modern society, but to me it seems a reductio ad absurdum. It just struck me when I read it that it seemed so self-absorbed and indulgent with so much that is wrong with the world.

how boring and wierd. I’ve never seen it

@janbb I can see what you’re saying – if it’s taken too far, if people can’t get pleasure from it unless they post a picture or something. But if not, it’s literally no different than any other form of self-expression. Although it’s not something that I would personally do or particularly enjoy, I see nothing inherently wrong with it. Judging someone for this is like judging them for selling an art piece that they created. Art, just like food, is enjoyable. People like to express their joy.

If it doesn’t float everyone’s boat, cool. But actually saying negative things about these people is a little too judgmental, in my opinion. Unless, like I said, you feel like judging everyone else for expressing things that bring them joy, too.

Daily it’s boring. If you post step-by-step directions about how to prepare your food it’s interesting. If you take horrible pictures of your food and it ends up looking like processed garbage it’s entertaining.

I used to stalk a co-worker’s food blog because the pictures were awful. It looked like she ate vegetarian poop.

@DrasticDreamer I can see what you’re saying, too. I am being judgmental; it feels to me like self-indulgent navel gazing and somehow different from artistic expression. I do see it as somewhat different from occasionally sharing pictures of food you have cooked yourself that you are proud of. Every effing meal? C’mon. But I may be able to look at it a different way if I am forced to. :-)

I think it would be a bit odd to do this solely for the purposes of posting it online, but it would be kind of interesting if done just for personal benefit. I think it could be really enlightening if someone kept track of the way they ate throughout an entire year, and then looked back and really assessed their diet.

He photographs it. The question is who looks at the photographs—who cares?

I’m with @DrasticDreamer on this one.

Personally, I think food’s an art. On Tumblr, I follow no fewer than ten blogs that are entirely devoted to food. What people eat interests me. Sometimes it gives me ideas. Other times it’s just an aesthetic interest. Food can be really pretty.

I think it depends on the whys and wheres. Daily? That seems like it would get boring fast, unless it’s for an instructional thing. I’ve missed this trend, I guess, and don’t really feel a need to go look for it!

Sometimes I take a picture of something I’ve cooked, but only if it’s really memorable. The cupcakes decorated to look like turkeys on Thanksgiving, the Easter cake that actually looked pretty (I have an inability to frost cakes in an attractive manner). I might put them on Facebook, but it’s usually a way to laugh at myself. Oh, and there was no way I could resist taking a picture of the Peepshi my daughter and mother in law made. Peepshi is made with Peeps, Rice Krispy Treats, and Fruit Roll Ups, put together in such a way as to look like sushi. It was adorable!

My sister in law and her husband took photos of the more memorable meals they had on their honeymoon and on their recent trip to Italy. They are both way into cooking, and relate a lot of their relationship highs to food. For example, their wedding favors were wine charms attached to recipe cards for the meal they had on their first date, the meal they had when they got engaged, or the meal they had on their first Valentine’s Day together. It means something to them, and I think that’s why they take the photos.

I find interesting – I photograph stuff in my bag.

I’m not saying one should never photograph food – I love it as much or more than the next person. The article describes a much more obsessive trend, in my eyes.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I bet you’ll find this interesting.

@MacBean—I love it – I think I’ll do this now as well. I love looking through all the photos of stuff I had in my bag

Neither. I read that article last night, and it was full of hot air. It described a few people who seemed a little nutty and probably would have found another way to express it even if they didn’t take pictures of _all- their food, and then it implied that this was an actual trend, because food is among the gazillions of things average people take photos of.

@La_chica_gomela True, true. The NY Times had a story about dog yoga last year. They found three people who did it as a joke and wrote it up as a sweeping trend.

@MacBean “Short Order Cook | Marathon,TX | 2-Person Household | She can bench press over 300lbs. | 2007” There is an entire frozen snake in her freezer!!!

@Simone_De_Beauvoir That makes me want to start carrying a purse again, although my photos would only have loose change, lint, and crumpled up receipts in them.

I know people who are constantly posting food pics on facebook. In the end I just stopped looking at that person’s photos. It wasn’t the food so much as the absence of people. Part of how I enjoy food is the sharing, with actual real human beings. I have always thought of the afore mentioned person that they spend too much time online, and not enough time cultivating existing real life friendships. I do post pictures of meals I’ve cooked from time to time, so friends and family can see what we ate on Thanksgiving, or other such occasions. But I also call my friends and family too, and make a real effort to forge real friendships with those around me.

If it’s art, put it in a gallery and sell it. If you made something you’re so proud of and you want to tell me about it, put it in an email, pick up the phone, or better yet invite me round for dinner.

How about starting a trend photographing the starving of the world each and every day and sending those snaps to our food photography freaks? Or, better still, send those photos to the famine-stricken areas of the world and photograph the reactions of the people who look at them! It all seems so tragic that one side of the world is dying of starvation while a part of the other side smugly clicks away at the contents on their plate, contents that others could only ever dream of!

@DrasticDreamer I know! wtf!? People are bizarre and fascinating.

@jeanmay I agree with you.

@ZEPHYRA That was my reaction too.

@MissAusten You should – it’s a snapshot of something insignificant but it points out something important about who you are.

I’m an unorganized slob, from what I can tell!

I love how enjoying food photography somehow makes me “smug” and unaware/dismissive of suffering. That’s an awesomely fair and intelligent assumption right there, lemme tell ya.

@MacBean Completely agree with you.

I also enjoy food photograhy, especially gawking at it. Clearly this makes me a bad person as well.

@La_chica_gomela We’re going to hell.

I don’t want to resuscitate this but I’m not against food photography. I love gawking at some good beefcake too. The trend outlined in the article were people who photograph and post everyting they eat before consuming it; it just seems a tad narcissistic to me.

@janbb I think blogging in general is pretty narcissistic but if nobody did it the internet would be boring as hell.

@MacBean Maybe they’d all come to Fluther instead? :-)

@janbb Fluther’s a little narcissistic, too! haha Lately I haven’t been answering much because I type out my reply and then think “Why would anyone give a crap what I think about this?” and then I abandon it.