Comments on: Secrets of Food Stylists.

By: PotatoCouch

PotatoCouch — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:06:12 +0000

I read an article a long time ago about this. For fried chicken commercials, they inject mashed potatoes into the drumsticks to make them look uniform and larger.

By: The Slapster

The Slapster — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:04:08 +0000

There's a company in Baltimore who's entire purpose is to manufacture food, all molded plastic essentially. It's realistic enough to standup in those buffet cases or Chinese food joints.

And yeah, my wife used to go on food shoots for ad work too. The stuff they did/do to make it look appealing is pretty cool, and entire science & art industry for faking it.

By: Jaim

Jaim — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 06:48:39 +0000

A lot of photo's of fruit..like strawberries are actually from carved wax!!!

Pretty neat

By: Cobwebs

Cobwebs — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:16:07 +0000

As I understand it, only the food which is being advertised has to be real. So, if you're advertising cereal, the "milk" can be white glue, but the cereal has to be the real product.

By: artbot

artbot — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:56:03 +0000

I thought that after the 70s they instituted rules for food photography where the food still had to be edible. It didn't have to be the actual ingredients, just edible. Could be wrong.

There's also a big difference between showing food in a movie or tv scene and its representaion in advertising, where there has to be some connection to the actual product.

I was originally a film major in college and the film dept. head was world famous for his ice cream commercials. I believe he had the Knudsen contract for, like, 20 years. We watched a 2 hour making-of doc on how to photograph ice cream. Not as sweet as it sounds, but still interesting.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:34:29 +0000

Why, that was the post that inspired me to research this one, Xeno.

By: Xeno

Xeno — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:12:04 +0000

I always thought that comparing fast food pix to what the customer gets would make a great web site. Unfortunately some have tried, and they were sued by the bastards who feed this crap to the public.

Here's a brave soul who has done it to some degree:
http://www.thewvsr.com/adsvsreality.htm

By: Dougall

Dougall — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:57:22 +0000

Years ago a friend and I started a graphics company and one of our commissions was to shoot food for a drive in movie intermission slide show - it had to look good enough to get people into the concession. We found out that the only food which didn't need work was popcorn! Everything else was tweaked and touched up. Hamburger buns - spray varnish = nice and shiny. Pile of fries - held together with toothpicks. It was 4 AM when were done. We were starving, and the only thing we had which was edible was popcorn!

By: bart

bart — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:44:20 +0000

Tobacco smoke doesn't make the greatest impression of a food steam. It's better to use a tampon soaked in boiling water