Try to get through the day without seeing a photograph of food. You can't. Those images are everywhere, from the McDonald's billboard on the side of the bus to the box of cereal you grab off the grocery shelf.
But of course, the actual cereal you pour never looks as delicious as the picture on the box. That's because a food stylist has probably spent hours selecting the best-looking flakes and arranging them in the most appealing way for the photograph.
Food stylist Delores Custer tells NPR's Guy Raz that she looks for "flakes with character" and arranges them one by one on the spoon for maximum appeal. That pristine splash of milk? It might be sculpted acrylic. Or it might be a digital illustration or even Elmer's glue — but it's definitely not milk. Real milk would make the cereal soggy and unappealing on camera.
Yet surprisingly, most of what you see in the ads is real food. If you're looking at a McDonald's ad, that's really a Big Mac there — though someone like Custer has picked through thousands of buns, patties and lettuce leaves to find the most photogenic example of each. That milk in the cereal ad may not be real, but Custer says if the ad is for milk, then you'll see real milk.
Real food can be difficult to work with, Custer says. "Food is like children: It doesn't like to behave in front of company." So stylists have a vast array of tricks and tools for making it behave.
CLICK HERE to hear the story on NPR
No comments:
Post a Comment