BBC food photography contest

There you go, that sounds a bit interesting to me. Let's look at that. I saw this on BBC news. Here's the winner.

If you're interested in this you should go over there and look at it. Their site allows much larger photos. BBC gives them their due respect. Here's what they say about their winner. It is quotes within quotes:

With plumes of flour jumping high into the air, this image of a baker kneading dough has, says food critic and chairman of the judges Jay Rayner, "a lovely structural element to it". 

"It's a scene that gives you the smell of the bakery before the ovens are turned on."

I don't smell a thing. Bakers don't do that. They don't slap around flour. They have to breath in there. They have to clean up their own mess. The photo is unrealistic and speaks of play and not to the actual food experience. From a photographer's pov it's bad for the camera, bad for the lens.  The forty contest judges would kick me off their panel for being difficult.

The following photo won the cell phone camera category. All the judges liked this one a lot.

This is what the judges say about this photo: 

"The one thing we obsessed about was how high above their heads this photographer had to get - because there is quite a lot of distance. I am almost suspicious they were on a stepladder. But it works."

The photographer is on a balcony and the table pulled underneath it. There is no room for legs of a ladder. When you examine the plates you see the meal is not real. Nobody is touching their salad and nobody cares for potatoes. A crab pliers on each plate but no shells. The gent has two toys or corn cob holders on his plate.

Two people submitted octopus photos. The panel is over seeing more octopus photos than octopi used for food. They say as these contests mature themes appear and become certain. So then, "Cream of the Crop" is the category, and the winner is a very good octopus photo. It's cream of the crop of expected octopus photographs.  They say of the second octopus photo, a smaller creature tangled up in black ink pasta, they didn't know if they'd care to eat it or wear it as a hat.

It tries too hard to be art by using food but does not not actually speak to reality of food experience. They think it's funny.

My favorite is near sepia winner of category "Bring Home the Harvest,"a photo of a head down tired shepherd man and his flock on a dusty road returning home from the fields, all their backs to the camera. There is no food in the photo, no harvest, save for the sheep and that upsets some of the judges and participants and viewers. The real beauty of this photo, is the smaller sheepdog still with enough gusto to spin around and challenge the photographer, still on duty to the end of the day.

The judges say this about a photo of a stack of melted cheese sandwiches with a fancy handle knife sticking through them.

"This does look like a classic piece of advertising photography," explains Rayner. "It's beautifully, beautifully done. The cheese is oozing, it's glossy. 

"It's hilarious in its outrageousness. It's voluptuous. It's like some sexy model of the food world."

Winner of the "Food in the Field" category.

"This image, again, divided the judges. Technically, it is possibly the best photo in the competition," explains Rayner. "A woodland glade on a slope, the sun cutting through the trees, and a forest floor of wild garlic in flower." 

"Some of us wondered if it was too gorgeous - the kind of thing you might find on a greetings card which says 'sympathy for your loss' 

"That's not to take away from the brilliance of it. If you see a photo which seems to immediately suggest a commercial use, you know they have got something right."

Going through these photographs opened my eyes to what judges look for and approaches other photographers attempt. Their aims are not my aims. The wild garlic photograph especially. I didn't see how it related to food at first.  The scene is the sort of thing that arrests everybody's imagination when they're in those forest situations where apparent monoculture takes over naturally, waves of wildflowers always get people and the random architecture of trees is awesome. The judges description of light stabbing through the trees and then their reaction of the whole thing being too precious did not surprise me. The photograph is too perfect. Their reaction to the riverside picnic, and why, is telling. From a photographer's pov  telling. They set their finger on why the photo strikes them as overly staged, its not apparent at first, all wearing wool hats, a globe artichoke on their table. Even having such a setup at a river is staged. "Let's take our board and our baskets and our wool garments down to river for extravagant cool weather carry along lunch." Winner of the "Food for Family" category.