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:

My mobile phone is a gadget that has many of its cool-circa-2005 features going unused in my hands. Hindsight tells me I shouldn't have spent a small fortune on it -- money that I could now be putting to better use (camera lenses and beer) -- and that whenever I next buy a phone (i.e. whenever this current one conks off) it'll be cheap, tough, and filled with features that were cool circa 1995. For I never use it for anything beyond the basics of mobile phone communication; voice calls and SMS text messages. I can't update my facebook status, or twitter a tweet, make a scandalous desi MMS video that spreads like wildfire, or tell you how to get from one end of the mall to the other using GPS, and god knows when the massive tsunami that is the Google Wave eventually crashes into our always-on internet lives, it won't be doing any waving whatsoever.

And I like this about it.

I'm not an early adopter. I'm not even a late adopter. So I'm probably the last person on the entire interwub who's signed up to Twitter, but now I have!

V