These aren’t the creations of a skilled Play-Doh sculptor. Photographer Henry Hargreaves and food stylist Lisa Edsalv turned these everyday eats into the colorful subjects of their “Food of the Rainbow” collection.
“I read about a woman who made pancakes and colored them to make them more fun and appetizing for her kids,” Hargreaves told TODAY.com. “I like the idea of colored food; it’s out of context of how you’d see them naturally.”
While you can’t exactly taste the rainbow (“They were edible, but you wouldn’t have wanted to eat them after we played with them,” Hargreaves said), all the food used was real and dyed with food coloring. In addition, he wanted to keep one or two unaltered elements in each photo, like the buns and cherry tomato for the burger, the serving spoon for the spaghetti, the butter and maple syrup for the pancakes and the cone and sprinkles for the ice cream.
Hargreaves is no stranger to photographing food in whimsical ways. He also did a piece showing the alphabet made from bacon strips and portraits made from toast, and says he’ll continue to use edible ingredients as medium for his work.