For Your Eyes Only.

When it comes to a photograph of food, all you have to work with is a 2 dimensional piece of paper with an image of food on it. You can't smell it. You can't taste it. You can't hear anything pertaining to what is going on around the food (think violins or noisy pizzeria or Grandma singing from the kitchen), You can't touch it. You can only see it from this one point of view. That means, all you have to convey a sense of place (including sounds) is this photo. All you have to tell the story of taste and smell and feel is this piece of paper or computer screen. That's it. But remember, a picture can tell a thousand words......so we are told.

Food styling to me is so expressive in really unspoken ways. Ways we may not think of when we grab that Italian food magazine off of the rack at Borders. But that photo of prosciutto on that table in that setting makes your mouth water. It reminds you of the smells at the Italian deli on the east side of town. And it takes you to that beautiful city of Parma where it is made. You feel a sense of the process it took to make it. You think of the sweet old guy who sells it from his store and gives free samples to the children in the neighborhood. Oh...and that taste...just like I remember last time I had prosciutto...that restaurant down on Buffalo street in the third ward. What a night that was. All from a photo.

People who sell magazines know that they are appealing to many senses when they make photos for their covers. They are hoping so anyway. Enough to get you to want to pick up that magazine or cookbook and look at it. Hopefully enough to buy the publication and read it recipe by recipe. Photos are powerful tools. We all know that. Everyday life tells us so. Think of the provocative images we see everyday via the Internet, newspaper or television. People are very effected by visual images. Advertisers know it, newspapers know it, food stylists know it, painters know it (to name just a few!).

A common link we humans share is the ability to look at something and interpret it with memories created by of all of our senses. Recalling a time, a place, a smell, a sound, a feeling, a taste. And we all interpret visual images differently depending on our experiences (or lack of) in life. That, my friend, is a beautiful thing indeed.  So when you look at photograph think about all the moments and memories it brings up for you. That is your life, your experiences, your uniqueness.