I find food styling very meditative. When I can completely become absorbed in the task at hand I often get lost.........in the mini micro world of crumbs and grains of rice and smudges on a plate or tiny bubbles in a glass. It's a wonderful place to be lost in. As long as you find your way out before there are art directors and photographers yanking you off set and back into reality.
Sometimes the world of food arranging is a secret world. You (and only you) know when you look at the computer screen with a likeness of your food on it that in order to move the green pea underneath the diced carrot on top of the broccoli you must move that piece of bacon that is anchoring everything together. It becomes.....well....gulp....a challenge.....to say the least. And it is no use trying to explain it to your client. They want it moved 1/16th of an inch or the photo is a failure. So, you move it. After you've moved the bacon (by cutting off just the tip) and propped up the broccoli with another pea and turned the carrot ever so slightly so it better supports the green pea that had to be moved 1/16th of an inch. Whew! It's done though....and everyone is happy. Just one more swash of canola oil and we are ready to shoot.
There are other days when the zen of food styling is not so zen. Someone has shaken me out of the "zone" and made me change something that when changed had an effect on the entire plate and now is not balanced right (visually or physically). This happens sometimes when someone wants to try "something" just to see what it looks like. They don't realize at the time that upsetting the balance of everything like that will cause a chain reaction that leads me out of the zen zone into the off balance zone.
Then the mood changes and the plate changes and the karma changes and things start to go wrong. Call me crazy but those of us in the business know what I mean. There is an optimal shooting time. An unidentifiable window of opportunity. Once you go past this window everything starts to unravel. The food is no longer at it's optimal freshness. Parts start to droop ever so slightly. The food shifts like it's been through a earth quake that only ants could feel. The spontaneity is gone. The food stops cooperating. It starts to unravel. There is very little time left before it is completely gone. You sense this. There is no getting back to where you were 10 minutes ago. The moment is lost. And you don't want to mention this to those around you. You know instinctively when the food is ready. When that best moment is. And sometimes you know when it has passed. Mostly, you will know and others will not. It is so slight sometimes...but you know when the zen is gone. And you know that if you don't hurry up and shoot it will mean starting over. Which is o.k. too. After all I say "that's what I am here for. To make pretty food."
Jennifer, I think your comments here apply not only to the stuff of food styling, but to all the stuff of life.
ReplyDeleteEveryday,if you are mindful, and soulful, life gives you chances to make connections, create, and savor the wonder of it all. These moments pass, often unnoticed to the undisciplined eye. But if you are in tune, you can see, and experience, the best of life. I say "see and experience", because so much of this is not explainable, it's ineffable.
I wonder if food stylists, and other artists, would agree, that you can't really explain that moment, you just know when it happens.
The best stuff is available every day. Those moments happen when you are open to the ceaseless, measureless beauty that we are given all around. If you are blessed with the vision, you capture, behold, cherish, and savor those moments, in food styling, and elsewhere. When they arrive, relish in them. What else are we here for....