Faux Photography

If you think I'm going insane, and need proof, it may be that I don't find food photography appetizing. I don't find anything very appetizing, which perhaps is a problem of its own, but food photography of the sort that comes up when you Google "food photography" looks unreal to me, not at all like real food. I can recognize the ingredients, of course, but the dish usually looks a little like it has been sculpted out of plasticine: Ineffably wrong.

Maybe it's that I never eat the kind of food that's photographed, or maybe it's the incapacity of a still image to transmit the idea of "food" to my hindbrain, but the dissociation between what I see in a food photograph and what I feel is a little chilling. Photographs of other things look more or less normal, landscapes and people and such. Just the food is weird.

Of course, the refrain of my life is, "do other people have this problem?" I hope so, because if they do, I have a million dollar idea: Mock-food photos.

I hate cameras, and don't understand anything about lighting or lens size, but perhaps you photographers out there can explain what it is you do to make a food photograph look characteristically the way it does, crisp and evenly lit. Then, apply those techniques to meals that are obviously not food.

• Place a boot on a plate, with mud "sauce painting" and pebbles to garnish.
  
• Shave a bar of soap into elegant curls and stand pencils up in them, with erasers on the side.
• Wad up some rags on a platter and edge them with grass clippings or maple leaves.
  

I am sure these descriptions fail to wow in the abstract, but I suppose that is where the art comes in. That is where you, my photographing friend, come in. In my mind's eye, these photos are already awesome. You'll make a million dollars.