For that picture-perfect palate

Snap that thought

It’s quite common for one to eat with their eyes first. Very often, especially when hunger strikes, whatever you see first is what you look forward to having. It may not be the best item on the menu, but it is usually what you grab. That’s probably why many go to restaurants hoping to have the alluring dish they saw on their friend’s Instagram feed.

The picture-sharing app has the unintended consequence of making people believe that anyone with a smartphone with a good camera  can be a food photographer. The fallout is thay many a times, the food doesn’t taste as good as it looks.

Tanmoy Savardekar, the chef at ‘The Good Galette’ says, “If it is an advertorial picture, certain techniques are used to give it that glow.

However, with photoshop and other editing tools now, everything can be manipulated to look appealing.”

“Even though Instagrammers mostly use natural light to capture the pictures, the filters add to the editing effect and mostly change the colour of the dish to a whole new shade,” he points out. “People who see these ravishing pictures are disappointed when their food doesn’t look like the picture they saw. So I guess the filter is the selling point,” he adds.

Nitin Hajela, a food blogger, puts a lot of effort into the pictures of his gastronomic experiments.

He says, “I believe in capturing something that is visually attractive. So when I know that I will be uploading a particular dish on my account, I give 80 percent of my concentration to the angle and background and focus only 20 percent on the flavour. Having said that, I make it a point to let my followers know if the dish is not tasty.”

However, he says that the visual appeal of food is taking over the focus on taste. “It’s great that one wants to remember how good a dish looks but you have to know when to put down your camera and taste it. Though I do give more importance to the picture for Instagram, I make sure that I taste the dish before the essence of the dish is lost. The temperature of the dish is very important,” he adds.

Nevertheless, there are a few other foodies who just want to dig in as soon as they see the food.

Content writer Deepika Singhania explains, “It’s just food and there’s only one purpose behind the whole thing — just eat! I would understand if it is a unique dish that you are capturing but you don’t have to take a picture of every single thing you eat.”