What's Natural About It?

In my job, I look at a lot of photography -- both commissioned and stock. I know what it's like to think of a concept for a shoot, to work with food when shooting, or to try and find an existing photo that expresses a message. We all joke about how it's impossible to shoot a decent picture of raw meat without making at least part of the audience sick.

All of this came to mind when I saw this lame ad for Target in today's papers. Filling up an entire page, it tries to meet the challenge of making vegetables look .... what, sexy? Appealing?

The main impression I take from it is "plastic." Maybe it's the white kitchen, white clothes, white teeth. It just looks so artificial. I don't for a millisecond believe that there is any reality to this ad. But it doesn't have a sense of the detached coolness I associate with most of Target's ads, either. It might be because of the kitchen setting (instead of the perpetual hip nowhere land of the television ads).


Adding to the sense of falseness are the tossed veggies between the over-sized acrylic spoon and fork. My eyes zeroed in on those right away. Somehow I doubt that those carrots, onions and spinach leaves were caught in mid-toss, as if it were a photo finish. And arranged so nonrandomly, with the five carrots evenly distributed around a circle. Nah. That's Photoshop in action, and it was a very calculated decision. But to not much effect, in my opinion. There is no sense of motion or activity in the photo. It looks stiff, and so the suspended vegetables just look odd and out of place.

And did I mention the wedding ring? That's a pretty big pile of salad, so she must have a hubby to eat it with. I should point out that there are an awful lot of onions in there, though -- more than there are carrots -- so I hope they've got some breath mints handy from the Target pharmacy. But that purple just looked so nice in the salad.

I know I'm probably one of the few who read the copy, but I thought it was pretty artificial also. First of all, the play on "vegging out" -- in this case, it's not really a double meaning, since it only makes sense as "eating vegetables." She doesn't look like she's vegging out... keeping everything so white is essentially the opposite of vegging out, in the usual sense of the phrase.

The text emphasizes organic, natural (whatever that means), whole grain, low-fat, and "fortified" (which is the opposite of natural). This from the retailer whose "organic" milk supplier recently admitted lying to certifiers. "Target is confident that our Archer Farms Organic Milk is organic," a Target spokeswoman told the Star Tribune in a Sept. 29, 2007 story. That would be despite the USDA's finding of willful violations of the organic rules by Aurora Organic Dairy (the real Archer Farms). Aurora is now on probation and in danger of losing its organic certification.

Makes you wonder where those organic veggies come from.