Tag: food writing

Food Photography Advice: Food Crusted Dirty Dishes Aren’t Appetizing


It caused me pain to take this photograph.  I’ve gone soft, because what I really should have done to make my point was to photograph what my plate looks like after eating something smeary and thicker than soup.

Meet the newest trend in food writing and an enemy to appetite: sharing pictures of your dirty dishes.

Perhaps it’s an effort to be more “real” like hard hitting journalists who aren’t trying to get you to eat food but are, instead, trying to show you the underbelly of human life through an anthropological study of its foul post-dinner litter but with the added bonus of being able to make the decimated food rise fresh from the ashes in your own kitchen…

Knock it off.

If you want me to see your real life, that’s great.  If you want to show me the detritus of your appetite, I can take it.  I’m a tough slob myself.  But photographs of your dirty dishes, even the artiest ones you can stage, will not inspire me to cook anything you’ve told me about in the same post.

I want to see the food you’re telling me about in its pristine state – before you finish it off yourself and leave me with nothing but the slobber covered crumb crusted dirty fork you used to eat it with.