I had fallen victim to what is called, by its detractors, food porn … the shows made now are full of exacting, intimate, amplified and exaggerated beauties. It’s not erotic, I can confirm – that’s not why it’s called food porn. It’s just unreal. You will never meet a Playmate of the Month; you will never eat the red, juicy tomato that you see on ‘Barefoot Contessa.'”

– Bill Buford, in the New Yorker

Buenos Aires – Yesterday was a day for wandering the Mercado del Progreso, which since my first visit a year and a bit ago has become a regular spot to head out to shop, when I have the time. It is a bit “out there”, nearly verging on violating the precepts of “shop and eat local” – but then I don’t subscribe to those precepts anyway. I met up with Grant, from What’s Up BA?, for a bit of looking around, poking at things, and snapping photos. He quickly discovered that his memory card was missing from his camera, and he being the better photographer of the two of us, I turned mine over to him to get some good shots both for myself and for his site. So, this trio of photos that struck me in particular are his work – you can see the better “eye” for composition if you compare to my shots of the market on my first visit. I also have a better camera than I did then, which helps immensely.

I picked the fish and meat ones because they’d actually caught my eye and I asked him to compose shots of the two of them – he came up with interesting angles that I probably wouldn’t have – it’s something for me to work on, no doubt! I can usually imagine the shot that I want, I just have to figure out how to actually take it. The vegetable one is his own choice, I just liked the riot of color.