Food Porn Project | Behind The Scenes – An introduction

I don’t remember the last time I ate a meal without taking a picture. No wait. I do. It was 6 months ago. At this restaurant. The lighting just wasn’t right.

I’ve started to realise that taking pictures of food is loosing its charm. I mean, there are just so many things to contend with when capturing that perfect shot. There’s the table setting for instance – who wants a boring glass of water, an empty bowl of salad or half a human being in their photo? Really? Then there’s that little problem with hungry human beings. Seriously? They waited 15 minutes for the dish. Would another 3 minutes’ wait kill them? Then there’s the matter of quality. Image quality that is. Let’s be honest. If you’re an amateur smartphone food photographer like me, you’re really not all that good. Yes, maybe you have your moments. But overall, we take over a 100 photos a week for that one shot that gains over 11 likes on Instagram because anything else would just lead to a meaningless existence.

I have a new obsession now. Actually, it’s been bubbling into existence for a while. It still has everything to do with food, but without the fuss of actually taking food photos. It also, in my humble opinion, has way more character than #foodporn, #selfies, #shelfies and everything else I’ve experimented with over the last year.

Introducing The Food Porn Project: Behind the Scenes. In this, I take pictures of people taking pictures of their food. Quite simple. Extremely pointless. But like this video with a singing puppies it may be entertaining. And unlike said video of puppy singing, it may even have some value to add.

Let’s face it. Food porn is essential. It serves a purpose. Done well, it leads to the discovery of amazing food across the city/world. Done even better, it has us salivating on our desks at the 4am binge when lunch is a long forgotten affair.

My first subject and the object(s) of her affection

My first subject is my friend Sandhya. I like this picture not because of the angle or how intriguing she looks in her quest for the perfect picture. It’s the expression on her face. Pure concentration, that. Which was followed with, “I just can’t get all the dishes in the frame, ya!” So that says a lot about the spread at Soo Ra Sang, where we enjoyed Korean-style beef and chicken BBQ accompanied with a range of pickled items from beans and beetroot to dried prawns and pickled radish.

Soo Ra Sang, or Korean Place as I fondly call it, is among the reasons I moved to Bangalore. Over time, we’ve had the pleasure of introducing a lot of our friends to the place and saw them pass the baton, Bibimbap in this case, on to their friends.

I think our one year anniversary is coming up soon so it might be time for me to write that review I’ve been meaning to for a long long time.

While I work on that and a million our posts I have in the pipeline for this blog, I’m glad to have this little project added to all the excitement. I’m sure I’ll polish it up, give it more of a purpose and find a way make it even more intriguing in time to come. But until then I’m just going to enjoy taking pictures of people looking awkward (or otherwise) in their attempt to stoke this near-universal obsession with #FoodPorn.