When I'm rich and eccentric,
I'm gonna put a mini photography studio in my kitchen. No, not the main kitchen--I wouldn't mess with the setup and layout of my personal chef's stuff. The auxiliary kitchen, where I get to cook when I want to. (Side note: yes, I will have two kitchens. That's not that eccentric, is it?)
There's good food photography and there's bad food photography. Good food photography is like the stuff they do for fast food chains--it can make even crappy food look delicious. It's a whole industry (or at least a large niche in the professional photography industry) and people have jobs based solely around arranging and photographing food--these people are called "food stylists."
Bad food photography is the type used by cheap Chinese restaurants--all washed out and unappetizing. Bad food photography is the kind you snap in a restaurant on your cell phone. It's dark, yellowish due to lack of good white balance, greasy-looking from the shine on the flash, and most importantly, it makes food look bad. Even food that tastes delicious and looks delicious in person looks disgusting in most people's pictures.
Picture this:
In the corner of my kitchen will be a standard countertop, with that rounded edge that fades into the wall of the backdrop (like the pros). When I want to photograph something I've made, I put the item on that part of the counter. Then I press a button and bam! a camera swings down from the underside of the cabinet, with a big touch-screen monitor to control it on the back side. Meanwhile, the photo-quality fill lights rotate in from arms embedded in the underside of the cabinet to provide that 6500K pro-photo look. The other lights automatically dim, and I can take the perfect photo. Now my food looks as gooooooood as it tastes.
When I turn it off, everything will recede into the underside of the cabinets, the lights will come on again, and I can keep cooking.
Last thing: since I'm putting all this tech in my kitchen, why not wire up a sweet sound system and disco ball setup in there? How about projectors on the walls pointing the way to the next ingredient in the recipe? How about an interactive floor, like in Wall-E or the Metreon?
I'll take one of each.
P.S. While I was looking up Wall-E on google, this came up. WTH?
