The Plastic Surgeons Of Food Porn

Golden breasts under the knife. Image: Sweded.

That mouth-watering Domino’s pizza pull-apart, the tumbling ice cube dive-bombing into a perfect splash of soft drink — hell, even Whiskas looks pretty damn tasty when it’s artfully forked apart on TV commercials. Just who is responsible for these flirtatious parades of food pornography?

Welcome to the unspoken world of food stylists, a niche industry responsible for producing attractive food and drink footage of almost otherworldly beauty. This critical weapon is vital in convincing you to purchase that greasy burger, which otherwise looks like a flaccid afterthought by a distracted teenage fry cook.

Surely those food shots are painstakingly constructed from fake wax ingredients and plastic vegetables. We’ve all heard those stories about the Neighbours props department using mashed potato in lieu of actual ice cream. Don’t those rules also apply in the world of advertising?

Not so, says Robert Carmack, an Australian food stylist of 20 years’ experience. “Despite regular rumours, food stylists don’t cheat.”

There’s a simple code of conduct when it comes to advertising the product with some honesty, Robert explains. “We use the actual product when we’re selling that product. I’m free to use anything else when it’s an auxiliary. In other words, selling cereal means I must use the actual corn flakes, but the sugar and milk – or white-coloured glue – can be faked.” Mmm, we always did love the taste of Clag as kids!

Food stylists generally come from a culinary background and work as an independent food style consultant among other gigs. In fact, Robert conducted this interview while hosting an international food tour, before casually mentioning he was about to head to Thailand to scout out new food trends and attend a conference on historical Thai influences. Sounds like the life of a culinary Indiana Jones to us (speaking of, where has Consuming Passions‘ Ian Parmenter ended up these days? One hopes he finally went over the edge he was constantly teetering on, is dressed only in a loincloth and has begun barking out lasagne recipes to an attentive set of monkeys in a Brazilian jungle).

Robert notes that many food stylists begin their life at gourmet publications, which usually involve proving your worth with mottled lighting and suspiciously realistic props. You’ll work your way up the (ahem) food chain, to photographing products like Big Macs against white Formica without any props at all, but still generating the same appeal to appetite.

In the age of Photoshop, however, everything is usually graphically manipulated after the final shot. “It tends to make stylists lazy when it comes to wiping out marks and drops, but it’s essential,” laments Robert.

Some would argue that there’s a degree of trickery and deception involved in the whole process of food styling. “Well, remember that people want a reasonable representation of a product,” Robert notes, “If there’s corn in a dried soup, but it sinks to the bottom then it’s essential that the stylist float a corn on top to show it’s part of the ingredients. Some may say it’s cheating by over-promising, but just as pertinently, someone can reply that they don’t like corn and they’d then choose not to buy the product. The key here is the number of corn kernels: does it relate to the actual product?”

A deliciously cheesy still from the Domino's TVC.

There are many common techniques for food styling floating around the internet. Some listed on food styling’s Wikipedia entry include undercooking vegetables to retain their colour, using acrylic ice cubes in drinks, and building salads around an upturned bowl. While these sound easy enough to work with, what are the hardest products to style?

Robert is quick to answer, “Roast chicken or turkey, chocolate, and ice cream in that order. Ice cream is the most physically challenging on my part, having to stoop, and also deal with the cold.”

I couldn’t resist letting Robert go without asking about those famous Domino’s cheese-pull pizza porn shots, for which he’s personally responsible. How does he get them looking so damn irresistible?

“The cheese pulls are actually quite easy, but only after lots of practice. You must learn the best local brand for pulling and melting, and then the lighting is essential. The steam on the Dominos pizza shots is real, at the expense of a very special steam light. Basically we’d cook the pizza off set, then cook to final colour on set with a portable element and a spray bottle.”

There you have it. Next time you want to truly impress your housemates when you’re serving up a pizza, turn up the spotlights in your lounge room, have a spray mister handy, and plonk the pizza down near a bar heater — you’re guaranteed to astonish.

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