Photography by Ian L. Sitren

Posts tagged “food and culture

Efficiency in the Frozen Food Aisle, According to Desiree

Last Friday was National Frozen Food Day.

Unfortunately I was running a little late getting anything together for it. That is when I had what seemed like a very efficient idea. Instead of doing the shopping myself, I decided to send Desiree back to the supermarket where she had shopped for me previously. Her last grocery store video turned out to be very successful, so repeating the experiment seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan.

I told her I would meet her there.

When I arrived, however, I discovered that Desiree had interpreted “repeat the concept” somewhat literally.

She was wearing, or perhaps more accurately not wearing, exactly what she wore the last time. The same red heels, the same confident attitude, and the same approach to grocery shopping that had apparently worked so well before.

Her explanation was simple. If the last video was successful, why change anything?

Fair point.

So Desiree continued down the frozen food aisle, apparently quite comfortable with the situation, while I tried to remember what I had actually sent her there to buy.

The timing turned out to work rather well. National Frozen Food Day may have been Friday, but today happens to be National Hash Brown Day, and frozen hash browns are exactly the kind of invention that made the modern frozen food aisle possible.

In the end, Desiree’s shopping trip may not have saved any time at all, but it did provide a reminder that the frozen food aisle can sometimes be a surprisingly interesting place.

And apparently Desiree intends to keep the same shopping strategy.

If you would like to see more of my food photography, and perhaps a few more of these pornochic adventures, you can visit my website at https://www.secondfocus.com


Potato Chips Deserve Better


Today is National Junk Food Day, a real thing someone decided we needed—because apparently we don’t already have enough reasons to eat chips, cookies, and neon orange snacks straight from a crinkled plastic bag.

But this year I decided to elevate things. After all, potato chips are the reigning king of American junk food—no contest. More bags are sold, crunched, and regretted than just about anything else in the snack aisle. So I gave them what they’ve never had: respect. Or at least the illusion of it.

I photographed a bowl of potato chips just as they came—no rearranging, no styling—but placed them in a deeply elegant cut glass bowl. Something you’d expect to find filled with pearls at an estate sale, not salted starch slices.

The result? A visual tension between crystal and crunch, between refined and ridiculous. High society meets high sodium. A still life that asks the eternal question: How fancy can you make a snack that leaves grease on your fingers?

Happy Junk Food Day, America.

And if you’re still hungry, you can find more food photographed just as it came in my commercial food gallery at https://www.secondfocus.com/index/G0000WFAqDJQOgKU