| "It’s always more important for it to look good than for it to be edible when you’re doing food styling," says Julie Van Rosendaal, Calgary food writer, cookbook author and food stylist.
Not many people know what goes into styling food, or that there is even such a career, but without these dedicated counsellors of fashion, you can kiss cuisine editorials, ads, cookbooks, packaging and your beloved Food TV goodbye. They shop for the best looking ingredients, prepare dishes and enhance food to be photographed and filmed in a way that is both unique and appetizing. It’s not easy.
"Food photography is the hardest," says Van Rosendaal, who graduated from the photography program at Alberta College of Art and Design. "People don’t realize that what they’re looking at is a painted chicken, for example, to make it look perfectly roasted or a bowl of cereal sitting in Elmer’s glue to make the milk look nice and white."
It’s not all foul play when it comes to styling,however. There are several sneaky tricks that ensure food looks like food in print and on television. These include making ice cream out of a corn syrup, sugar and shortening concoction, spraying fruit and vegetables with glycerin to make them look extra dewy, undercooking meat to ensure it stays plump, putting marbles in the bottom of soup bowls to make them look extra filling and even placing a hot, water-soaked tampon underneath an entrée to create steam. While these techniques may seem slightly misleading, the current trend in styling is a natural look.
Based in Maryland, Debbie Wahl is a stylist with 25 years experience who has made several observations surrounding the industry’s evolution.
"Food styling started off very stylized, highly styled, very contrived, a lot of fakery, probably, just to get the food to stay out under hot lights," says Wahl. With the advent of digital photography results can be seen immediately, thus speeding the styling process. With "cool strobe lights and natural light photography," she says, "food styling has gotten much looser, more casual. There’s a real movement towards the green movement of food styling – just cooking the food and letting it be."
This development suits Tracey Kusiewicz just fine. A Vancouver-based food photographer, her business is called "Foodie Photography," Kusiewicz enjoys shooting some of food’s flaws. "We’re actually showing crumbs and oozing, it’s not so perfect anymore," she says. "It’s a better, more realistic representation of what the food is, as opposed to glossing everything over."
Irene McGuinness, a Vancouver food stylist, has worked for several clients, including Canada’s premiere cookbook publisher, Whitecap Books, and prefers the freedom that comes with editorial assignments as opposed to the forced details of advertising. "Zeroing in on a bun or the foam on a Starbucks latté doesn’t really interest me."
With these editorial segments, however, comes the challenge of styling and shooting food before it is in season. "If you’re doing print media," McGuinness explains, "particularly magazine editorial, you’re working 4 to 6 months out, so a lot of times — if it’s a product using fresh peaches, for a summer spread, we’re doing that in the winter. You really have to have your connections with suppliers."
McGuinness and Kusiewicz recently collaborated on the Whitecap book Halibut, and have a great working relationship. "Mainly, you’re dealing with creating an image and you’re both kind of putting that together but it’s a difficult thing to communicate because obviously the image isn’t there," says Kusiewicz. "As the photographer wanting to develop a certain style in an image, I have to communicate to the stylist what I would want the food to do to reflect that style."
People eat with their eyes first, thus these intricacies of arranging, lighting and presenting have to be all the more deliberate and artful. Debbie Wahl agrees. "Having some sense of design, either through education or instinct, is very helpful because you are essentially creating a little sculpture on a little palate. You have to be able to visualize how that food dish is going to look two-dimensionally."
And what is the future of food styling? Digital photography and high definition television will continue to have an impact in this industry devoted to image of the edible. "Everything is always affected by technology," says Van Rosendaal. "And I always like the fact that food, to a certain extent, isn’t. You still tend to cook using the same techniques as your grandma did."
And still, one question burns in my mind – does food suffer the fate of the camera adding 10 pounds? Irene McGuinness chuckles. "No, but the food stylist does." |
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.