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"Lindsay Comstock is a New York-based writer, photographer, and editor. Her work has appeared in American Photo, PDN, and Rangefinder.\u00A0This post was originally published on the\u00A0Shutterstock blog\u00A0and has been adapted with permission.\u00A0\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;quot;Food is the newest frontier in photography,&amp;quot; says\u00A0Patrick Janelle, a designer for clients including\u00A0Bon App\u00E9tit\u00A0and co-creator of\u00A0New York City-based\u00A0Spring Street Social Society\u00A0with\u00A0former\u00A0Top Chef\u00A0contestant Camille Becerra.\r\nJanelle's vivid Instagram account (@aguynamedpatrick) \u2014 featuring a diary of his daily\u00A0cortado coffee, shout-outs to his favorite restaurants through inventive food photographs, and his New York slice-of-life imagery \u2014 enabled him to quickly amass a following of more than 100,000. We caught up with the artist to get his view on why food has become central to photography today.\r\n\r\nShutterstock: There's been an uprise in beautifully designed niche publications about food. What do you attribute this to?\r\nPatrick Janelle: There's a much stronger focus on food in general in our culture. People are very interested in understanding where their food is coming from and eating seasonally. And just as interior and architectural photography were trending earlier in the century, there\u2019s been an upswing and interest in food photography over the last several years. We now want to connect with the origin or our food \u2014 perhaps in reaction to the less interpersonal aspects of a digitized world.\r\n\r\n\r\nWhy do you think this is happening now, specifically?\r\nJust like the decades following the 1950s epitomized packaged foods and industrialized food for the sake of convenience, today\u2019s food culture is concerned with eating conscientiously. (Similar to the Farm-to-Table movement that chef Alice Waters propagated in the 1970s at her Berkeley, California restaurant Chez Panisse.)\r\n\r\nWhat trends are you seeing in the styling and aesthetics of contemporary food photography?\r\nThe styling tends to be organic and loose, and maybe slightly askew. Publications are veering away from everything being perfect, toward everything having more texture and composition \u2014 even a little more clutter, so the aesthetic is a little more lived-in.\r\nThat being said, it\u2019s all very styled; it\u2019s not haphazard in any way. For instance, with food, sometimes the better photo is not one of a perfectly composed dish \u2014 it\u2019s of someone who\u2019s just launched into a dish with a fork. The attempt is to give the imagery more context.\r\n\r\nHow would you describe your own visual aesthetic, and how does this correspond with your design work?\r\nI shoot very clear, sharp images in which there's a specific subject I'm trying to capture; the aesthetic tends to be editorial. I like to have elements of personal objects in the photos. If I'm taking a photo of coffee, you might see a glove or my wallet in the photo \u2014 it gives it some context and makes it really specific to the environment (and the client).\r\nMy photos describe my personal aesthetic. The images are beautiful (and hopefully not too precious) and representative of a heightened aspirational lifestyle. I think it's really important in any of my line of work \u2014 whether for Instagram or designing for a client or doing work for a magazine \u2014 to understand who the audience is, what the context is, and therefore what the best use of the medium is.\r\nEvery medium has its own context and constraint. What I shoot works well for Instagram; it wouldn't necessarily work in a gallery setting.\r\n\r\n\r\nHow does the work on your Instagram account tie into the rest of your life?\r\nMy interest in photography and the editorial world extends beyond styling for photography. Instead, I'm interested in how that mode of lifestyle can be extended into our real lives.\u00A0That's why I've felt the need to create these dinner parties and gatherings surrounding food.\u00A0It\u2019s important to me to not let this creation only be digital and social \u2014 I\u2019m interested in making these connections in a very tangible way. I don\u2019t want this to exist only in the ether.\r\nI want my feed to be a story I'm telling, where people can get to know me through little details of my life in a chronological narrative. I enjoy finding the new spots in the city and giving them exposure.\r\n\r\nAll\u00A0Instagram photos in this story are \u00A9 Patrick Janelle.\r\nTop image credit:\u00A0Shutterstock/Patrick Janelle"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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