For many food bloggers the photograph of their creation is as important as the sharing of a recipe. Posting a picture is the digital equivalent of presenting a meal to an appreciative family. Comments on your post would then be the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’. As self esteem boosts go, the Holy Grail is winning the acceptance of The Powers That Be at Food Gawker or Tastespotting. These sites aggregate photos from food blogs (with links to their corresponding posts), selecting what they consider to be only the best quality food shots. (Not recipes!) Food bloggers hate them and love them — all at the same time. Their decisions can seem arbitrary at times and it is very frustrating when what you think is a great shot gets passed over. The reward for acceptance, however, is a huge increase in blog traffic and the thrill of seeing your photo on their site. Paying these sights too much attention, however, has its down side. Its easy to spot the bloggers who worry too much about the shot and not enough time worrying about the whole post itself. Also, its not good when bloggers start to doubt themselves because their photos get rejected frequently. The photos below were rejected for having “lighting issues, dull, unsharp focus.”
I will say this, the featured photos at these sites ARE gorgeous and you can spend hours paging through the amazing recipes and photos. I often go there first when looking for a special recipe. Food bloggers are a wealth of information and seeing their step by step photos is much more useful than going to a recipe book. Bloggers are some of the friendliest people around and will usually ALWAYS respond to a comment or question. Just try doing that with a cookbook editor! Use the search function, find a picture that looks good, then jump to the blog. Leave comments.
Ooh and aah.
