Aussie Bloggers

The great thing about Aussie Bloggers is that it’s given me the chance to interview some of my bloggy heroes, one of whom was recently nominated for a Bloggie for Best Food Blog. I’m talking about The Food Pornographer. We met one Saturday morning at the Subiaco Hotel (for breakfast of course) and I brought along a digital audio recorder and my little flip video camera. TFP had her camera.

Once we’d ordered and I set up all my equipment, we began chatting. I wanted to replicate as best I could a typical meal with TFP, interruptions by waiting staff included. After all, meals are what we know her best for. So…

When did you start blogging?

I guess I always had a personal journal thing before people started talking about blogs and getting a Blogger account. It must have been about eight years ago. I had animated gifs, midis and flashing stuff on the site - I went through all that. I had a journal site and talked about what we did, where we went out… The main reason was to keep in contact with lots of people without too much effort. I’m not very good at keeping in touch.

I started posting food from family celebrations to try and tempt my sister to come home -”Look at this gorgeous beef rendang” - then people who were searching for food starting commenting and interacting and I thought, “This is really cool”, so I started concentrating more on food and taking more and more photos and the blog became more about the food than me. The food’s more interesting than me.

But it’s not just a food blog. You put some of yourself in there…?

I’m not a professional photographer. It’s not like a magazine type of thing where the food is perfectly presented; there’s always a story behind it - we’re going out or its a family celebration - so it’s more than just the food itself.

[The waiter brings us our drinks: English breakfast tea for TFP, long black for me.]

So I didn’t have a comment system on there so people sent me emails. I love it when people send comments and emails. I value what people write. It means in some way I’ve reached them, even if it’s just one photo they like.

Does having a community of your own drive you to blog more?

Absolutely…

[Breakfast arrives and completely distracts us as we talk about the food a bit and TFP takes photos and I take video of TFP taking photos of food. She’s having a full breakfast and I’m having a very healthy fruit salad (how boring).

TFP tends to take a few photos and afterwards she decides which one’s the best.]

I move the plate so that the protein is in the foreground. That’s the highlight of the meal for me. The toast means nothing, it’s just there. I use the macro; in fact, my camera is permanently set to macro. I tend not to use zoom as it gets a bit shaky and I prefer to use natural light rather than flash.

[TFP’s hot tip: Photograph the menu so you can describe the food properly.]

What does your family think of your blogging?

I’m quite private about myself and my partner Jac and so I’m quite careful about talking about us. Sometimes I use people’s real names but I always ask first. Personally I wouldn’t use my real name and I don’t say enough to identify us. For example, I wouldn’t show a photo of the front of our house. I’ve had some weird emails where people want to say something pornographic to me so that’s another reason to guard my privacy.

My family is very patient and very tolerant (thank you, thank you, thank you) but I’ve learned to be quite quick when photographing their meals. I’ve got other family members who blog too so that helps. In fact, one of my sisters posted about all of us who blog in the family. So often there are two or three accounts of the same family event on the net.

[TFP takes photos of toast.]

Blogging has a useful side too. When Jac was ill recently we could look back on my blog and find out when exactly her symptoms started because I mentioned it. I’d blogged about when we’d got back from the hospital. We’d had toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches.

[Everything comes back to food.

It seems mean to conduct the interview over breakfast. Was her food getting cold?]

You’d be surprised how often I eat cold food. Because I don’t want to bother people with my photography, I take photos of everybody else’s food first so by the time I get back to my plate…

Do restaurants approach you to review their food?

I was approached last year. An Indian restaurant had noticed my photography of their food and offered me a voucher for dinner and they were keen to use my photos for their redeveloped website. They haven’t yet got back to me

After the event I started to think it doesn’t feel quite right to write about a restaurant review after a freebie because if I don’t like something, I don’t feel right about saying it. It’s like literally biting the hand that feeds you. So I think if someone was to offer me another freebie I don’t know whether I would take it. If you pay for the food you can slam it, can’t you?

Is that how you feel about advertising?

I know a lot of people are against advertisements on blogs. I’m completely against pop-ups. I know a lot of people are trying to at least get back their costs. Hmm… I’m reviewing what I do about that at the moment.

Did your traffic increase after the Bloggies nomination?

In the few days after the nomination and after a few people generously talked about on their blog, I did see increased traffic and increased my plan just in case.

Being in the company of some of my favourites is such a huge thrill but what’s really cool is that now that I’ve been mentioned in the news my boss has finally bothered to look at my site. She said, “Ooooh, there’s my lunch!”. I had to make the Australian news before she would check it out.

Do you have any other blogs?

No, I don’t have time. I do have a personal site with my CV but I’m struggling as it is and finding it hard to keep up with The Food Pornographer and I want to make them really good so people don’t wait and then get disappointed.

Not junk food?

People like the McDonalds ones I think. I’ve been really criticized for putting junk food online but there’s a lot of people out there just love looking at junk food.

[Just for the record, TFP is very slim despite eating a full breakfast including hash browns - which were very good.]

And the future?

At the moment I’m working on a revamp of the site. I use WordPress but I haven’t updated my versions since I installed it - [gasp from me] - I’m scared of breaking it. So what I’m going to do is build a mirror site and make sure everything is working before I copy it across. I’ll revamp the categories which are a real mess. I think I’ll go for a three column blog with a random banner at the top with brand new photos. I like the black and orange and grey so I’ll probably stay with that colour scheme.

TFP’s Tips (And she says she is not a professional photographer!):

• Protein at the front
• Take a photo of the menu
• The food looks better - more natural - if you don’t use flash
• Use the macro settings
• Make sure the food is sharply in focus
• Only put up the really good photos

TFP uses a Panasonic TZ3