I recently flew to San Francisco – one of my very favorite domestic cities – to attend the 2nd Annual Foodbuzz Fest (here’s last year’s write-up). Follow along for the next two weeks as I recap my weekend trip!
Saturday morning was reserved, once again, for informational sessions. Last year, I’d attended a cheese seminar led by Cowgirl Creamery and a sparkling wine seminar led by an ignorant, ill-informed wine blogger. This year, due to feedback from bloggers from last year, I’m sure, the sessions were mostly geared more towards blogging and learning about blogging, with two sessions squished in the middle about products. My choices were It’s a Snap (food photography), Alaskan Seafood, and The Write Taste.
It’s a Snap was led by Marc of No Recipes, whose blog and photography (and friendship) I’ve enjoyed for a few years. He was joined by Laura of The Cooking Photographer, who was new to me, but she was clearly comfortable with the material and they both led an informative session. Through no fault of their own, my only “criticism” would be that the seminar was a bit unfocused. With a huge group in front of them, a fair number holding fancy dSLRs, some holding point and shoots (me), and no one with a big sign indicating their comfort level with their cameras… I imagine it was hard to know what level to speak to. I’m comfortable with my camera, though I know I can get better pictures from it, and don’t. A girl holding a fancy camera raised her hand at one point to ask “What’s macro?” and I was pretty horrified that with such an expensive camera, she hadn’t read the manual or at least Google’d a bit to see how to get good pictures from the camera. (Side note: expensive, fancy cameras don’t take good pictures. They just make it easier to do so, but I can just as well take excellent photos from my camera. I just don’t.) In any case, the sessions could have been broken into sections – there were two sessions as it were – perhaps one for people with dSLRs and another for point&shoot, or one for people who categorized themselves as novices and another for those who felt they were ‘comfortable’ with their cameras. Just some thoughts – I thought Marc and Laura both did very well as it were given the issues, and they even had some hands-on time after the presentation for people to photograph food. It was a fun and informative session.
Alaskan Seafood… well, you’ll hear more about that session in the next post.
The third session I attended was entitled The Write Taste. I was incredibly disappointed by this session for a myriad of reasons. It was led by three food bloggers, one of whom apparently won an award for best food writing last year… but she did hardly any talking as one of the other food bloggers led the session. I was hoping for some sensory exercises; the plate in the first picture is from this session, and I thought perhaps we’d close our eyes and taste/feel each item, and describe it without being able to see it, or something. I don’t know. Instead, we created a chart of ‘forbidden words’ and had to write about the items on the plate – pick one (or more) – without using the no-no words. This didn’t help my writing at all. While I can certainly be accused of overusing “yummy” there are other words that other people abuse that I rarely use. For example, delicious was placed on the forbidden list, and I use that word sparingly, only when I truly, truly mean something is just wow. That might not apply to someone else’s blog, but for mine, it does.
Admittedly, I spent most of that session Tweeting snarky things – and was promptly called out by the woman who wound up leading the session, as Twitter was being projected onto a screen. Ha! but I only started Tweeting once I realized this session was going to be completely useless. Ah well, I’m sure someone else felt it helped them. I’m just at a different stage of my blogging and writing, I guess.
But the take-away here is that Foodbuzz is trying to provide a service here, and I applaud their valiant efforts in that vein. Informative sessions that can help us improve our blogs are always welcome, and I commend them on that effort. It isn’t their fault that sometimes a session doesn’t quite go that way.
Next up… the Tasting Pavilion! Check back on Monday, November 29th 🙂
T.C. says
What is macro? Hahaha. Me heard of it.
Good thing I don’t really take pics or blog.
And I like yummy foods but will not go to a place that uses Yummy in their name. Yummy chinese take out or Yummy Taco. Both exist near my old school. ;P
Siobhan says
You didn’t mention how we had to do forced writing. 1,2,3,WRITE! which isn’t how most writers, food or otherwise, write at all. Maybe next year, it should be taught by people who actually teach creative writing or food writing. I was hoping for some exercises or new techniques, instead, well, we got what we got.
CheeeeEEEEse says
Sounds like slavery.
*whip*
You will write what we tell you to write!
*whip*
Also, cool-hwip.
Carrie (Love Healthy Living) says
I agree with you that the photo session was unfocused. I took a lot of notes too, though. 🙂