Eyes on stalks and crick in neck this morning after a rather OCD session browsing lush food photography into the very wee hours of this morning.
Pinterest has a lot to answer for here. Although I haven’t quite got my head around its intricacies, it provides an opportunity for so much visual feasting that I am loving it more and more - along with the rest of the world, of course. It’s one of the fastest social media networks in the US and the UK, and basically gives you the chance to ‘pin’ images you like onto one or more virtual pinboards. Other users can follow one or all of your boards and they can ‘like’ or ‘repin’ images that take their fancy. Each image links back to the website where the image originated so it’s great for driving traffic to website and blogs. That’s essentially how I discovered some of these glorious food photography websites. The following are among my current favourites:
New York-based Vanessa Rees can make the prosaic extraordinary with her wonderful eye. She doesn’t just do brilliant food photography (although she is a dab hand at really cool recipes) - she’s be the girl I’d ask for if I needed a wedding photographer. Her website sings with personality. And I love the way she puts her cat in all her posts. Deeply jealous of this gal’s creative talents.
I don’t know what Helen Dujardin’s baking was like when she was a professional pastry chef, but you just want to jump right into her images of food. I love the palette she uses - often a divinely muted backdrop with the perhaps one vivid accent colour: a bowl of cherries, the green tinge of a pear, the blush of rhubarb against white linen. And of course, because she can cook, she blogs some exquisite recipes.
The unique style of this stupidly talented, award-winning food photographer and blogger has been, let’s say, emulated all over the shop. But I suppose that’s testament to how good she is. And why she got a book deal. One of things I really like about her images is that they often have height in a world where so many food pix are taken from above. By the way, I’ve made the chocolate fudge cake in this image and it tasted fab - although for some reason it didn’t end up looking like hers.
Not sure about the name of her blog, but the content is glorious and some seriously enticing recipes to try like this pizza with shaved asparagus and loads of garlic.
These little tidbits of peanut butter and chocolate deliciousness will be my self-congratulatory treat when my Lenten deprivations are over come Easter (along with just about everything else on this website).
Other blogs and websites that have literally kept me awake at night include Honey & Jam, Roost, Chris Court and cannelle et vanille (whose image is featured at the top of the post).
By the way, if you’re interested in Pinterest, it’s pretty easy. Just use the Pin It button on most sites including this one and this will allow you to upload an image to your own board. It’s also a useful idea also to download the Pinterest bookmarklet which will sit in your bookmarks toolbar so you can Pin any images that take your fancy. The only hitch is that Pinterest is currently invite only - not sure whether this is some sort of marketing wheeze to add hype, or a genuine attempt to prevent the service being flooded. Whatever, if you write a comment below I can send out a certain number of invites.
Feel free to take a look at my Food board at http://pinterest.com/penandspoon/ for some fab food images. Be warned: this could start you on the road to sleepless nights and a serious image addiction.
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