”Do not touch unless you intend to buy it.” That message had been added to a display of beautiful yellow and red striped tomatoes at the market in Antibes.
I’ve photographed this stall for years. One of those photos even filled an entire spread in the first edition of my travel guide Mitt Nice. This year the display is even prettier than before. and more people stop to photograph it.
I rarely shop there. The signs have always felt a bit unwelcoming and her tomatoes are more expensive than at the less photogenic stalls where I go. But watching the new signs, I felt a flicker of guilt. I’ve taken lots of pictures without contributing much to her business. If we want food markets like these to survive, perhaps we can’t just treat them as picturesque backdrops for the perfect shot.
So I bought a melon. It was delicious but at €11, well above my daily fruit budget. As I left a young woman picked up one of the tomatoes and posed while her friend took a picture. Then she returned the tomato, as a used prop. Suddenly I understood why the signs said ”respect the food” in capital letters.
I pose for pictures too, as you can see in this month’s picture. It is the lavender chapter in my new guide, Upptäck Provence. The publisher picked a picture of me taking a selfie in a purple field. The story behind it: even if I find it slightly silly everyone posting selfies, I know this kind of content gets positive reactions. And if I don’t get likes on social media, it’s harder for me to reach readers. So during my third visit, I took a selfie too, with a proper camera, asking a friend to document it with my other camera. In the end, this meta-picture ended up being the one used most.
So you might say that I’m no different from the woman at the market hunting for content. But I didn’t harm anyone else’s business. Lavender grows in neat rows, so no walking on the crops.
I used to rely on Instagram to check if the lavender had started blooming. But the whole platform has shifted from ”here’s a mobile photo I took today” to ”here are my ten highlights carefully edited.” Instagram has also removed the ability to browse by hashtag — a real blow to my business. I used hashtags to organise my content on one account: readers could follow a tag and find inspiration or updates after publication. All of that is gone now.Rebuilding ten years of content on platforms I actually own is simply more work than I can take on. But from now on everything that goes on social media should also go on my own web (like these monthly recaps that are published on both LinkedIn and kristinasvensson.se).
Keeping up with the shifting trends in social media is a full-time job. I’ll stick to posting my favourites. My answer to eating or instagramming sun-ripened tomatoes would be: both.
🥂The champagne? I forgot it again. But I think I deserve a bottle of my own after getting through the financial statements for the extra company I was cornered into starting two years ago.
Pictures of the tomato stall (before the respect the food signs).
Science communicator and project manager based in Sweden, working internationally. Montly recaps in English.
- Franska utsikter: Korsikas sydspets - 1 juli 2026
- June 2026: When a Provençal tomato turns into content - 30 juni 2026
- Ny bok: Upptäck Provence - 5 juni 2026