According to some professionals, focusing on Instagrammers is a much better investment for restaurants. In 2016, NYC restaurant Springbone Kitchen estimated that posts by Instagram influencers were responsible for five percent of its new customers each day, on average. A recent study shows that influencer marketing is the fastest-growing online method of acquiring new customers, beating out organic search (e.g. Googling something), paid search (the ads that show up in said Google results), and email marketing (the reason you’re constantly clicking “unsubscribe” links).
Jenna Ramirez, influencer marketing manager for PR firm Bread + Butter, says she doesn’t typically encourage her clients to host Yelp Elite events as part of their influencer marketing strategy unless the business owner suggests it themselves.
. The writer Ruby Tandoh — always comfortably unfussy with her cooking — recently extended this approach to her Instagram, posting slideshows of in-progress messes (garlic skins, emptied cans in the sink).
“there is an art to making a kitchen into a photography studio, and i havent mastered it nor do i have any intention of trying. however, i’ve turned a corner and realised that if i can’t make my cooking look cute, i might as well lean into the ugly and use that camera phone flash and be honest about this space that i cook in and the realities of using it and the truth of how things end up looking.”
I think that the more casual look in food photography has legs. One of my favorite photographers is William Eggleston who took vivid pics of dishes in sinks and sloppy fridge freezers over 50 years ago.
With smartphone photography, decline of DSLRs, filters, styles have changed. Even Cartier-Bresson said that sharpness was a bourgeois concept. Personally I use mostly 5 or 10 MP pocket cameras and camcorders from 10 years ago without flash that fit in a coat pocket and they work for me.
From NPR 12 years ago.
A quick search for images using “William Eggleston food kitchen” might be interesting.
Though upon further reflection, perhaps there’s an instructional metaphor in there somewhere…
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