If your best culinary adventures are being devoured in about as much time as it takes to watch a sitcom, take a picture -- it'll last longer.
Thanks to the lower costs and easy preview features of digital cameras, taking a photo of your food before you eat it is replacing the toast as a pre-meal ritual. As food has risen from respected sustenance to cultural currency, taking pictures of the stuff has moved from a fringe behaviour to a hot trend.
San Francisco's Pim Techamuanvivit, who runs the acclaimed food blog Chez Pim, recalls a summer trip to Paris where she met up with two of her fellow bloggers at a local two-star restaurant.
"When the food arrived, the three of us whipped out our respective cameras at exactly the same moment to take a shot of our beautiful food," she says in an e-mail interview. "We had a good laugh about it.
"Clotilde [Dusoulier, of the blog Chocolate and Zucchini] said, 'Other people say grace before they eat -- we food bloggers do it with our digital cameras.' "
"The fact that digital cameras offer virtually unlimited amounts of shots without the previously associated cost of film and development certainly has set people free to experiment," says Simone Paddock, a professional architecture photographer in central Oregon, who has expanded her repertoire to include food photography thanks to increased customer demand and her own culinary desires.
But the fad goes well beyond the passions of bloggers and pro shooters; it's also part of a major cultural obsession with documenting -- and sharing -- the minutiae of our daily lives and travels.
As I'm reading over Techamuanvivit's e-mail messages, I receive another from my friend Andree.
Freshly returned to Edmonton from a trip to northern China, she has fired me her vacation snapshots. Among the typical pics of temples, camels and the Forbidden City, there they are: Peking duck, a platter of deep-fried snake, metal tubs full of Turpan raisins and a bowl of camel hoof tendon.
I'm reminded of my own trip to China two years ago and the moment when I started taking pictures of my food. Afterward, I had trouble reasoning with myself. Why had I just taken a half-dozen photos of a bearded Shanghai crab, soon to be dismembered and devoured?
Eating I understand, but why did I feel the need to immortalize this transient, perishable subject? After all, by the power and pleasure of my consumption, I was essentially just conspiring to turn the thing into poop. Shouldn't it be the fragility of the creation we are really enticed by?
I guess the allure mostly boils down to the loving charge of salivating anticipation and how much we want to hold on to it.
"You eat with your eyes first," says veteran food photographer Lou Manna, who shot food for The New York Times for 15 years.
"Food is emotional," says Manna, who visited Toronto in the fall to help some media types figure out this exploding amateur trend.
"It's something that makes you remember events and holidays and there are technical ways you can bring out that emotion."
It can also bring out that emotion in others.
Techamuanvivit says the food photos on her blog can take on a voyeuristic aspect.
"A lot of my readers get a kick out of following my crazy eating life," she says. "You don't have to leave your desk to follow me right to El Bulli or The French Laundry. It's not as good as being there, certainly, but it beats staring at an Excel spreadsheet any day."
She recently ditched her full-time gig as an IT professional in Silicon Valley to craft her blog full-time. Right now, she's writing and shooting her way through some of the best eateries in Europe.
