People Who Photograph Food and Display the Pictures Online - NYTimes.com
As a food blogger (ok, well, on the best of days, anyway), this is already a very interesting article, although my own food photography has woefully been relegated to poorly-lit iPhone shots in my kitchen.
But instead of foodie-ness, my brain’s recently been occupied with thinking about social monitoring: “listening” to the conversations, commentary and bursts of collaboration that happen all over the social web. Through social monitoring (it sounds rather nefarious, doesn’t it?), we have the ability to witness emerging trends, to essentially watch beliefs turn into behaviors and interactions. Powerful stuff for understanding people’s desires, motivations, and all that other juicy personal stuff ethnographers (and marketers) like to sink their teeth into for solving design problems and shaping brand/product experiences.
Though the most popular and glorified food photographers tend to produce what has come to be known as “Food Porn,” I think the more interesting example in the article is the photographer who began documenting his meals as a method for really seeing and being accountable for what he ate for his own health and well-being. Or even the more Feltron-like example of Tucker Shaw, food critic and author of, “Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Shaw said the year he spent photographing his food (and a year was enough for him) resulted in an achingly honest account of his life that revealed far more than the fact that he ate too few leafy green vegetables: “The pictures, I realize now, are incredibly personal, and by looking at them you can probably deduce the type of person I am.” Moreover, the pictures set off memories and emotions in a way a written journal could not. “I remember every single day, who I was with, what I was feeling,” he said.
We can see the power of uncovering patterns in individual habits and behaviors- imagine a nutrition education or weight-loss program that used a food-photo diary as a visual “experience sampling” method to better understand and support dietary behavior change. But also imagine an aggregate view of food-photos and related posts- what trends of consumption might emerge based on location, or gender, or age or any other filter you could apply. What could we learn about groups- like teens or single women? What could we learn about the cultural zeitgeist of our cooking and dining habits?
