Commercial food photography is becoming ever more popular as cooking becomes more popular. People are curious what the limits are as far as creating food and so there is a major call for those that can take great pictures of food. Even amateurs are interested in finding better ways of taking pictures as their popularity on social media is tied to how well their pictures look. As such people are looking at commercial food photographers have found a renewed popularity, especially if they are on the cutting edge.
Magazines are always looking for great pictures and the plethora of food and housekeeping magazines have ensured that there is a huge market for great looking food. Photographers are being forced to ditch some of the old-school tricks as people have grown savvy to those tricks, but at the same time advances in technology have made those tricks somewhat obsolete. For example, lard used to stand in for ice cream because the frozen confection was unable to stand the heat of studio lights; as digital cameras have become more commonplace and image manipulation software better more photographers tend to use the ice cream itself.
Part of this renaissance is also due to people looking for relative natural looking food rather than the ideal. That is, as people hold themselves to a higher standard of what they eat they are more interested in how food actually looks rather than what a photographer thinks it should look like. This need for greater realism in their photographer has made for actually better photography, as they treat the food as the would a model: The photographers are looking at establishing lighting and other details before the food is even ready so as to capture the food at its best. This has made for some of the best food photography ever, and it looks like it is getting better all the time.
Interestingly, some of the techniques in commercial food photography are being used by amateurs in order to drive hits to their sites and pages. As social media influencers recognize that better pictures equate to greater fame some posters are actually taking classes in photography as well as looking for tips on how to take better pictures, meaning that even the pictures taken on the fly are of pretty good quality. As such the need for better pictures are making for better pictures and the technology is keeping up with that need as smart phones are comparable to even mid-range cameras. For photographers there has never been a better time to be alive, and things look like they are only getting better.