Just before my birthday, this article came out in The New York Times about restaurants “turning camera shy.”
Basically, chefs and restaurateurs who have spent hours planning and discussing how to best create an experience that transcends mere biological face-stuffing are getting really annoyed at us for popping flashes and intruding into others’ personal spaces to get a better angle and just generally putting everyone on guard by making us all aware that a photo op is in session.
Then my friends took me out to eat at Logan in Ann Arbor and I took this photo.
So now I’m a hipster in the worst sense of the word, apparently, according to this hilarious new Tumblr, called Pictures of Hipsters Taking Pictures of Food.
I don’t regret it.
Logan is totally welcome to use my photo to advertise their birthday-boy dessert menu.
But should we cool it? Have we got enough photos of other people’s food? Is there anything to say anymore besides “Jealous!!!” and “That looks delish” and “Is that fennel? It looks like fennel.”
I don’t know. If you set that dessert down in front of me again, I’m probably taking another candle-lit mood shot of it. It’s sort of another way we’ve learned to enjoy our food. We look, we comment, we research, we chat, we share, we taste, we comment some more.
And now we snap.
Sorry, offended chefs of New York. We just do.
Meantime, maybe we should all read this article in The Braiser with the title, “How To Take Pictures In Restaurants Without Everyone Hating You.”
