Árpád Pintér

It so happened that I didn’t like studying. Or maybe I just didn’t like how we were taught. So, when I was drawing, I discovered that drawing was good and then went off to photography school. That’s obvious, isn’t it? Of course, it turned out that they didn’t really teach anything useful, so it just remained to experiment. This reached its peak when the ‘Vendéglátás’ (Hospitality) magazine came out, which is where I started with food photography a good ten years ago. This was the first job which I really enjoyed. It turned out that I love to cook, what’s more, preferably, to eat, so I gave up on the idea of being a cook. I prefer to eat what’s being made, after photographing it, of course. Food photography is an exciting thing, balancing a little on the borders of two worlds, light and shade, yin and yang, whatever you like. Moreover, without the background photos and without culinary knowledge, food photographs also lose an important nuance. Nowadays, I don’t take photos in my spare time at any cost, although – I can’t myself deny it– I do see everything in pictures; I frame everything I see in my head, I think about which would be the best angle from which to photo the subject. In this way, I’m like the really good chefs, who are also visual types, since it’s not enough to cook well; you also have to be able to serve the dishes well. Good presentation sometimes also overshadows the cooking...