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I'm very much an 80s kid. I grew up with Transformers and G.I. Joe, not Rugrats and Ed, Edd n Eddy. Though I did spend a good chunk of my childhood in the 90s, growing up in Muscat, away from the twin cultural juggernauts of India and the US, meant that some things arrived later, and stayed around more. And 80s cartoons, and a love of the toys that came with the subculture, is one of those things.

God bless the digital camera, that turned documenting everything you have for lunch into a viable option; the minutiae of everyday life into viable subjects. Face it, most of us take the food we eat for granted, not paying it much more attention than whether it arrives on our plates hot and on time and if it's tasty. But to those among us who are happy to call ourselves gourmands and foodies, the food we eat is a thing of beauty, to be cherished, considered, and respected.

One of the things I never thought I'd ever be good at, let alone be asked for tips on, is food photography. But life takes us in unexpected directions, and over six years of having a digital camera, food photography has become and important and enjoyable part of my photo-taking. In the film days I was always curious about it, and would drool over beautifully-photographed cookbooks, but I don't ever recall taking any food photos.

Now I take food photos nearly every day. It doesn't seem like a special thing to me: I have no fancy light boxes or complex studio set-ups -- like a lot of you out there I simply take pictures of the food I eat for lunch or dinner in the available light I have with either my compact camera or digital SLR, whichever suits my mood. So when people compliment me on my food photos and ask me, "How do you do it?" ...well, I'm both amused and slightly baffled.

Just such a thing occurred on Twitter a few weeks ago. I was looking through an old folder of unwritten blog posts and tweeted offhand about coming across a food photography post I had planned and abandoned years ago. Soon people were asking me to post these tips, and I promised to, but it slowly slipped out of my mind. Then people started reminding me, saying they were looking forward to it, and I was even more intrigued.

So I gave it a long hard think, and came to the conclusion that I would need a whole book to talk about food photography. Maybe I will write one some day, but for now I needed to make a blog post!

So I asked myself, "What are the basic elements of good food photos? What are the essential factors people should look for, a mental checklist to tick off when they're taking photos of their lunch?"

And so I came up with these:

Holiday shopping is one of the few times I actually end up browsing through a store for more than just the essentials like groceries. Other than bookstores, I have a very low threshold for shopping, so this is one of the few times spend more than ten minutes there.

And the strange thing about shopping for relatives in India, is that I always end up finding something or the other I want myself! Take this little action figure, for instance. It was only AED 15 (a little over $4), and for the price it was quite well made. It's a cheap and cheerful toy, surprisingly detailed, and one in a whole glut of products that covered everything from zombie pirate playsets to dinosaurs and giant gun-wielding policemen. On the other shelf were Transformers toys that cost over $100, and they weren't actually any good.

But while it's a nice little figure on its own, I was sold on it when I noticed a hole in the pack for a finger, and a well-camouflaged purple button on the figure's belt. I had to press it...

How cool is that?

V

More home-made sandwiches for lunch! I left them open for the sake of the photograph.

V

A couple of weeks ago did my bit to help ease the credit crunch by put a good deal of cash into retail spending. I bought myself a Pentax K200D digital SLR camera. It's the first professional camera I've ever owned, and while everybody and their mother told me to get a frakking Canon or Nikon, this one -- quirks, warts and all -- is the one I wanted (also there was a rumour going around that the model was discontinued, and indeed it took me a week to track it down in a store).

I've spent the past couple of weeks testing it out. With no real SLR experience behind me I haven't half a clue as to what I'm doing. The days have also been brown and grey, which doesn't fill me with enthusiasm to take pictures. Here's a bunch of decent ones I've taken so far (out of hundreds of lousy ones, heh).