Camera eats first

‘Camera Eats First’ is the behavior and global phenomenon of people taking photos of their meals with digital or smartphone cameras before they eat, mostly followed by uploading the photos to the social media. The term refers to how people feed their cameras first by taking photos before eating themselves. It derives from professional food photography while the behavior of the ‘Camera Eats First’ is generally for personal use such as keeping photographic food diaries instead of commercial purposes. It can also be referred as online food photography, food porn and photogenic food.

One reason for the rise of the ‘Camera Eats First’ is the rise of digital convenience. The global participation in social media is on continual surge with the advancement in technology and commonness of digital devices that serve as mediums for social media. The veteran food photographer of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Saveur magazine Dave Hagerman mentioned that Instagram, one of the social media that has the most posts of ‘Camera Eats First’ photos, provides a way for people to share and indulge their common obsession of food globally, thus encouraging taking pictures of food for personal use. More importantly, keeping a photogenic food diary is being treated as a form of self representation, showing who they are from what they eat in accordance to the quote of “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”, by the French philosopher and gourmand Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1825.

The 'Camera Eats First' phenomenon is becoming more common all over the world with the emergence of smartphone and social media. After taking photos of their food, people will usually share the photos on social media such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. According to Webstagram, there are more than 180 million photos with the hashtag #food on Instagram currently. Other hashtags such as #foodporn and #foodie are often added to the photos. It is estimated that 90 new photos hash-tagged #foodporn are uploaded to Instagram every minute. The phenomenon is especially more prevalent among the younger generation. According to a survey done by News Limited, “54 per cent of 18-24 year olds have taken a photo of their food while eating out, while 39 per cent have posted it somewhere online. This compares with only 5 per cent of over-50s who say they share food snaps on forums such as Facebook and Twitter.”

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Wikipedia