Reminiscing about the joy of dining out through photos of cutlery from some of city's best restaurants … both past and present.
Who gives a fork? I suppose you could
say John does …
I'm going to let you in on a little
secret. You know all of these fabulous amateur food pictures I post
on Instagram and Facebook? Well, my endlessly talented and artistic
boyfriend is responsible for approximately half of them.
When we go out to eat and the food
arrives, I will take a bunch of pictures and then John will, or vice
versa. Sometimes his are better and sometimes mine are. Sometimes we
compete to see who can get the best shot and sometimes, to be
perfectly honest, we are simply far too hungry to care.
Why am I telling you this? Well, quite
often John will take out the camera almost as soon as we sit down and
start taking random shots of the dining room, or the flowers on our
table, or the bug crawling on the window sill or a cool light
fixture. Though I like to tease that he does this to avoid
unnecessary conversation (John is not a man who enjoys small talk), I
honestly believe that his inner artist enjoys playing with the
camera, its settings and the available light to occasionally achieve
some fascinating shots.
Whenever we get home from dining out
together, we go over the pictures we just took, discuss their merits
(or lack thereof) and pick out our favorites. One thing that John
almost always gets a shot of is the restaurant's cutlery. Whether
it's a fork and spoon, a steak knife or chopsticks, he always
manages to snap an interesting shot of them. After almost eight years
of writing about and taking pictures of food, you can probably
imagine how many of these utensil images I have.
Quite often he takes these shots just
to get an idea of the light level in the restaurant. But sometimes he
does it to be silly and see if he can capture a reflection of me,
him, or even the server. Generally though, I think it's about
eye-catching textures and capturing different colors and effects.
For a long time, I had no idea what I
should do with these images. I toyed around with the idea of posting
one and asking folks to guess where this particular cutlery came
from, but I finally came to the decision to post them just as they
are … which is art.
My boyfriend, or let's face it, my
husband (we've been together for 15 years this April) is one
extremely talented individual. He studied fine art at LSU before we
fell in love and for a bit he pursued a career as a graphic designer.
But, unfortunately, he tired of employers wanting his work to be
quick and dirty instead of artistic and unique, so he backed out and
followed an alternate route.
Thankfully, we still can appreciate his
intrinsic gift through photography, even if it is only a bunch of
pictures of flatware.
Which is your favorite?
***Enjoy more blogs by Kim Ranjbar at sucktheheads.com, and follow her (and her photos) on Instagram @sucktheheads and @nolafoodpron.
