Food photography though nothing nearly as difficult as boiling water is really all about aesthetics.
Different people have different aesthetics and thus a different approach towards taking pictures. One could assume that every artist or so called who's good with his/her hands in drawing or painting is automatically a good photographer and it's not so.
I've plenty artists on my instagram feed who do not know the first thing about contrasts or balance in a picture and then there are some who couldn't be called anything remotely artistic not by a long shot, yet their photo shots and compositions are beautiful.
Where am I going with this?
Nowhere except that there are some who are largely ignored by 'learning curve', strictly food photography speaking.
I've come across many a insta accounts with a few thousand followers which in my opinion are a good lot many and they are primarily a foodpic account and not one, not a singular food picture they post on their account is even passable.
Extreme close ups, tight composition, background issues, photo/food composition, low lighting, underexposure, awkward angle, shallow depth of field, unsharp or dull, flat lighting, white balance issue, harsh lighting/overexposure are just a few follies that plague almost all their pictures and yet they keep posting a dozen photo's a week with the zealousness of a religious fanatic followed by an essay of hashtags which include words like #foodporn, #photography etc and here's the problem.
Foodporn isn't about food, it's about the presentation of food which may or may not be delicious in reality. It's about appealing to baser instincts of the viewer with the ability to make anyone salivate who looks at the photograph and for that the aesthetics have to be absolutely in sync with the thought behind the picture.
When a photo in question is marred by above mentioned problems the hashtag #foodporn is automatically out of question because no matter how tasty the food in reality may be, if the photograph doesn't translate it's exquisiteness then it's no point calling it anything porn because it fails to arouse my greed to eat it immediately.
So when I look at accounts that are created by people who love 'photography', 'food', 'travelling' etc and have a whole wall of badly clicked food pictures in an odd yellow lighting which probably comes from trying to beautify those photo's, since those are their aesthetics I'm always at a loss as to how a) this person's pictures haven't improved in almost two years b)why do they have such a large following c)why do so many people comment on these pics telling them how delicious they look d)why must these people insist on being proud of their pics when clearly there are a hundred thousand better food pics accounts out there to at least learn from.
So what I gather is that they completely fail to comprehend that what they call #foodporn photography is in fact just bad photography and that they just do not understand the difference between good and bad pictures.
For them any shot which has been edited to whatever ghastly editing they perceive is good enough to be hashtagged into oblivion and those who write good things about it in the comment sections are either sycophants or just as ignorant about photography.
I'm not trying to ridicule anyone or claim myself to be on top of the photography food chain, it's merely about how these accounts that bravely brandish their profiles as food lovers and photographers are in fact completely clueless about it and it irks me to see that they make no attempts at improving either.
Maybe they don't feel the need or perhaps they just don't have that learning curve or could be they already have enough followers to warrant that they're good enough.
'good enough', now that's a word hate. Problem with everything being just 'good enough' is that it isn't very good.
Ah, that's a bit about my photo rant.
