Monday, October 29, 2007

Now About the Delicious Pictures…

In my last posting I promised to tell you about the pictures, ah yes those beautiful pictures of wonderfully delicious food. Perfectly arranged, dripping with enticement, visually cooked to perfection. Yeah right!

When people ask me how I stay on my eating plan lifestyle change, they always want to know my secret…I have never told anyone. What I think of when I order at a restaurant or fast food chain. What goes through my mind as I scan the beautiful color menu of luscious dishes…until now!

I think of a photo shoot of food I assisted on years and years ago. I have no idea if they still style food the same today because of digital photography and photo shop. However what they use to do to food was amazing. To get food to look appetizing, they had to go through the most un-appetizing things. Food is just plain hard to photograph and did not hold up well under all the hot lights.

Here are a few ‘styling tricks’ they used on food.

Meat of any kind with those “grill marks”…stamped on with a mixture of steak sauce and dark furniture stain.

Milk always use to shoot a little blue,(like skim milk looks) so most of the time photographed milk was either regular milk with Elmer’s White Glue mixed in or just glue and water. Yum…
You could forget getting any little moisture drops on any food under the hot lights. So all moisture drops are glycerin, sometimes put on one drop at a time, sometimes sprayed on. So all those salads with the just cut freshness look is lettuce with cardboard under it, (so it won’t wilt down) sprayed with glycerin.

That great cup of coffee! Ever notice that coffee has a few bubbles just to the side along the edge of the cup? Most of the time that will happen in a regular cup for just a few seconds after the coffee is poured. To shoot that look in a studio, you had to whip up good ‘ole Elmer’s Glue with water and sometimes a little egg white for those bubbles. The stylist would put in a few bubbles, and then step back for the shoot and hope they would last.

That hot off the grill look of most anything was glycerin again and if you wanted just a slight bit of vapor or smoke coming off the meat with just a tiny smoke pill or a tiny tube under the food attached to canned smoke. Now I am sure they use photo shop for this now as this was a huge time waster when it was used. I remember that shot took about 30 takes. And remember that food doesn’t move.

Ice Cream was a real winner and each stylist had their own little tricks on how they made perfect ice cream cones. The one I sat in on used a combo of paint, ‘Playdough’, plaster and whatever goodies are in the ice cream, like chocolate chips etc. Bingo…forever lasting ice cream cones.


Now you know a little trick on how I analyze food on a menu or in a fast food chain and how I don’t eat as much in restaurants. Enjoy your next outing to any restaurant.


Amazing Yours,
Dr. Marlene

Don’t forget to listen to my show on Wednesday: Halloween, I will be talking with a Wicca or what they use to call a Witch.

You can learn more secrets and about my weight loss of 170 lbs. with the mental methods that I used in my book: The Thinking Side to Thin: available on Amazon or under links to my other sites.

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