Behind the scenes: Mystery meat macrophotography and covert Wal-Mart shopping

Friday, August 31, 2007 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: macrophotography, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) Yesterday I posted shocking macrophotography pictures of processed meat products. Since then, over a quarter of a million people have viewed the photos in the first 24 hours, and word has spread all over the internet about these sick, graphic images of processed meats. I've already received numerous complaints of people vomiting (I'm not kidding)! More importantly, however, I've also received many comments from people who say they are no longer going to eat processed meat products at all. They're either opting for fresh meats or thinking about going vegetarian. I have not yet heard from Kraft Foods or Jimmy Dean, although there's not much they can say since these are accurate, honest pictures of the products they're making and selling right now (the photos were not altered).

Today I'd like to give you the behind-the-scenes story of how these photos came to be, along with a preview of some upcoming macrophotography projects you'll be seeing soon here on NewsTarget.com.

Do you really want to meet your meat?

This processed meat idea hit me one day as I was driving past a local Wal-Mart grocery store and thinking to myself, "I wonder if people would really eat processed food products if they knew what they contained?" On an impulse, I turned into the Wal-Mart parking lot and decided to enter the store and buy some processed meat products with the intention of photographing them. This caused a concern, since I would never be caught dead buying processed meat products, and certainly not in a Wal-Mart. I was worried that a NewsTarget reader might spot me buying this garbage food, snap a camera photo, and I'd end up all over the internet holding a package of Oscar Mayer hot dogs with that deer-in-the-headlights look...

So -- get this -- I put on a hat and sunglasses and actually stealthed my way through the Wal-Mart store, trying to buy these processed meat products without getting noticed! I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I've had people walk up to me in grocery stores before and start chatting about NewsTarget, and I didn't want to risk giving someone the wrong impression about my own lifestyle. This is actually a very important point with me because I live the lifestyle I recommend. I eat superfoods, exercise regularly and follow an incredibly clean diet. I wouldn't even think of taking a single bite of an Oscar Mayer hot dog or Jimmy Dean sausage, and even holding those foods in my hands made me feel icky just from the energy of the flesh from the slaughtered animals used to make those products. So I sure didn't want to get snapped by a camera standing in front of a Wal-Mart checkout lane with my hands full of junk processed meat products.

After I completed my undercover meat purchase, I headed home and set up the macrophotography equipment. Since I'm experienced at this (I love to take nature pictures, especially of flowers), that was easy. I already had all the equipment and know-how necessary. The next part, however, was not so easy: I had to touch the meat products to prep them for the camera.

For someone who never eats processed meats (and, in fact, eats relatively little meat at all, and never meat from mammals), this was an especially challenging task. It didn't take long before the sickening smell of hot dogs, sodium lactate, sodium nitrite, beef hearts and pork parts filled my kitchen. And as I started taking the photos, there were several times I felt like gagging. My appetite was diminished and I actually started feeling angry at the meat processed industry for the way they manufacture and market these sickening products. But I intuitively felt this was an important documentary photo project and that the world needed to see these photos, so I continued on, tearing open the hot dogs, sausages and salami, arranging them for the camera, and searching for the most visually interesting elements to photograph.

Way beyond "point and shoot"

Macrophotography is a tricky thing. If you've ever tried it yourself, you probably know that you can't just stick a camera up close to something, snap a photo, and expect it to look good. It involves a lot of specialized equipment, optics knowledge and a whole lot of light pointed at exactly the right spot. Depth of view is extremely limited at these ranges, so camera focus becomes critical (and there are no auto-focus professional-grade macro lenses, you have to do it manually). A lot of photos ended up being deleted because the focus was off, or the lens filter was dirty, or the exposure was wrong, etc. But if you stick with it -- and you have the right equipment -- you can snag some incredible shots of really tiny things.

When you're zoomed in that close on something, it's also easy to get lost in the topography of the object. It's like being a microscopic person walking around a huge moonscape, and sometimes it's hard to find your bearings. For example, looking at a piece of salami with the naked eye, I could locate a giant fat blob that I wanted to photograph, but inside the viewfinder of the camera, it actually takes quite a bit of searching to find that same fat blob (it's sort of like trying to find something on a slide under a microscope).

Another interesting thing is that if you zoom in too much (like 5x magnification, which is really more like 50x by the time it gets on screen), the objects lose their context and just look like isolated blobs of anything. It could be a galaxy, or a molecule. Sometimes it's hard to tell what you're looking at if you're in too close, right? I found the best magnifications were between 1x and 3x.

Click here to see a particularly sick-looking photo of some salami at 3x magnification.

Hilarious Google ads

Our Photo Tours content rendering technology automatically places Google Adsense ads underneath the photos. Google chooses the content of these ads based on the text on the page. I found it hilarious seeing ads for "Kielbasa Sausage!" underneath pictures of some nasty-looking chunk of processed meat. Many of the ads that appeared were promoting organic beef and pork products, which also seemed a bit strange.

Some ads were for food additives like phosphates, and others promoted things like, "Meals for Seniors" which are, no doubt, probably made of processed meats. Overall, I found the ads to be quite hilarious, and not really very useful to the topic. Here at NewsTarget, we constantly get complaints from readers about the Google ads, but that's because those people don't yet realize we don't choose those ads! Google does, and sometimes their ad selection algorithm produces bizarre results.

Coming next: Superfoods and plants!

My next macrophotography project, which will be published here on NewsTarget.com, will bring you incredible photos of superfoods and fresh produce. You'll see the amazing symmetry in nature, and you'll marvel at the complexity in the construction of the plant fibers and structures. My aim is to show you the beauty in natural plant-based foods, epsecially in contrast to the sickening imagery of processed meats.

Click the picture on the left to see an example of the kind of nature photography I'm talking about. I snapped this photo on the Big Island of Hawaii, and it's an example of the kind of approach I take to photographing nature. When dealing with nature, you have to be mindful, delicate, even sensual!

Nature is simply amazing, and most of the time we miss the miracles in nature because our eyes are too big and too far away to notice the detail. With this photography technology, however, we can alter our perspective and see nature from a whole new point of view, taking in the natural beauty, balance, color and symmetry. You'll be inspired and amazed at what's coming in the next NewsTarget Photo Tour!

And I won't have to sneak around Wal-Mart, shopping in disguise! I only need to buy fresh, healthy produce and let the camera show you just how amazingly beautiful and healing Mother Nature can truly be.

If you want to be emailed when that Photo Tour is posted, just subscribe to our free e-mail newsletter. Click here to subscribe now, and you'll receive an e-mail alert when these new superfood photos go live!

By the way, when I'm walking through nature, or buying fresh produce, I see this kind of beauty and symmetry all around me. I'm always humbled by nature, and it will be a great honor to be part of bringing you this next round of macro photos of healing foods and plants. I can't wait to fill my kitchen with the smell of citrus and broadcast healing images of Mother Nature's healing foods!