Tomato and Olympus camera. Photo: Emily Farris.

These days, food porn seems almost to be giving the old-fashioned kind a run for its money. Everyone with a digital camera and an appetite fancies him or herself an amateur food pornographer, which is to say there's a lot of bad food photography out there alongside the good stuff.

Camera companies are catching on to the trend and trying to make a buck, with digital point and shoot models that are manufactured with food photography settings, like this Olympus which has a "cuisine" option, and this Sony, with its "gourmet food" mode. Chances are good that if you purchased a camera recently, it has some kind of food photography option and you don't even know it. If your food photographs are less than porntastic (like the tomato shot here), it might be worth your while to consult your camera's manual or look online to find out.

If you don't have a food setting, don't rush right out to buy a new camera that does.

One pro shutterbug's opinion, after the jump.

I realize that you are probably tired of eggs, being that it's just a few days after Easter and you've probably still got a dozen hardboiled hanging out in your fridge. However, if you can handle thinking about them just a little bit longer, then you've got to check out this book. It is one of the more beautiful cookbooks that has crossed my path in a long time and, even though I promised myself that I wouldn't buy any more cookbooks until I was actively using the 200 or so that I already have, I just wasn't able to resist buying Michel Roux's Eggs.

In addition to being a downright lovely book, it is also accessible and useful. It touches on every aspect of the egg, from chemistry and safety, to how to best storage your eggs and ways in which you can get the best flavor out of them. It starts with the basics of hardboiled eggs (although I'm guessing you probably already have that covered) and proceeded to walk you through some of the most glorious frittatas, omelets, mousses, custards and baked egg delights. If you often have people over for brunch, this book will help you think about using eggs in new and creative ways. I can't wait to try out some of its recipes.

Food styling has always been a field that I would love to go into, but I lack the skills and have no clue how I would proceed even if I did. So instead, I just read my boyfriend's digital food photography books and think about the tricks that one might use in the profession. Sometimes I consider using them for my personal blog, but I believe it constitutes cheating. Anyway, I thought I'd share some interesting ones just in case anyone needs to make their food more beautiful (though in some cases, it will result in it being inedible!):

1) To make your coffee appear bubbly and hot, add a teaspoon of soapy water.
2) For an extra cheesy-looking slice of pizza, cook the pizza halfway, then cut out one slice and add extra cheese around the edge of the cut. Finish cooking the pizza, then photograph the extra cheesy piece as you lift it out.
3) Use food-colored mashed potatoes for ice cream. I would actually never do this because my likelihood of forgetting and eating mashed potatoes with chocolate sauce is way too high.

Any others, perhaps ones that don't render the food inedible?

In the course of writing here, I end up taking a lot of pictures of the food I cook and eat. Oftentimes I get lucky and end up with a good picture, but typically that's after taking about 17 shots from different angles. Even after all that, the results are typically mixed and the good pictures are essentially the product of dumb luck. I'm always looking for new tips to make my pictures just a little bit better.

One of my favorite food blogs out there is Still Life With... as it is a site devoted to food styling and photography. In each post, Lara walks her readers through each step she takes to capture a particular shot, including all the not-so-pretty stops along the way. I'm loving her recent post on the way she got an appealing photo of a slice of pecan pie. Pie, while delicious, is not particularly lovely on it's own and so required substantial help to get gussied up for the close-up. The final shot is gorgeous and makes me long for pie.

Oh, and if some of Lara's pictures seem familiar, it's because she's also the blogger behind the site Cook and Eat.

One of my favorite food blogs is The Wednesday Chef, written by Luisa Weiss. She mostly cooks and posts recipes from the foods sections in the New York and Los Angeles Times (although the picture of the Fennel and Olive Salad you see above is from Nigel Slater's "Kitchen Diaries"). Her pictures are gorgeous but real, she alerts her readers to any changes she made from the printed recipe and she is always honest about how she feels about the results of her cooking efforts.

Her latest post is particularly appealing to me because in it she tells of the scent memory that a recent trip into a cheese shop triggered, taking her back to childhood visits to a cheese shop in Germany with her mother.

photo by Luisa Weiss

Most of the time, our Food Porn posts here on Slashfood are gorgeous photographs taken by food bloggers of their own creations. However, food porn isn't outside the professional world, either. Photographer Francesca Crescenti takes amazingly beautiful pictures of food, like the Broccoli Pasta above. However, what's even more incredible to me are her still-life shots of kitchen tools. Her photos make everyday things like a whisk or a collection of spoons looks positively elegant. Take a peek. Though her site is not English, a food picture needs no translation.

There may be some debate over whether breakfast really is the most important meal of the day, but it is undeniably one of the best looking.

These aren't the first sticky buns/cinnamon rolls that have been seen here as food porn, but all that really goes to show is that cinnamon buns are one of the most visually appealing breakfast foods that you can find. This is probably the very reason that Santos, the gifted food blogger behind The Scent of Green Bananas, chose to use this tempting breakfast scene as an example of how to work with the limitations of your camera to produce some great photographs. This shot uses natural lighting and is not an extreme closeup, so it could be easily replicated with almost any digital camera. To improve your own photography, try staging shots like this one to capture the best lighting in the room. Just be sure to have a cinnamon bun (or several) to practice on.

That is the title of a great article from blogger, celebrity TV chef and photographer Benjamin Christie.

He opens with "most of us don't have the time to go to great lengths to create the perfect shot, so here are a few ideas, tips and more on how you can achieve your perfect food photo" which about sums up the post - he covers the equipment he uses and the reasons why, the three types of food photography (Close in (food only) and all in focus, Close in with limited depth of field and Table setting elements providing character and a reference situation). Each has a great photograph as an illustration.

He concludes with a few hints in regards to lighting. Worth a read for all budding foodporn image takers.

For those with camera and a penchant for a little piece of foodporn may like to join in with the new themes at Foodography and Still Life With... As it is the start of a new month so new themes have been selected for these two flickr groups.

Foodography has had Sam select Liquid as the theme. Thinking less wine and drink (after all my theme last month was wine bottle and glass) more creative shots of liquidised food, olive oils, sauces, reductions, gravy boats and the like. But of course there is nothing to stop you going the smoothie route or taking pictures of cooling cocktails complete with condensation just to get the taste buds going!

Still Life With... has Food and People as the theme. Something I tend never to include in photos is people. Here perhaps I should get out and take some snaps of my local Starbucks staff or that greasy little man in the kebab van... another great theme to get you snapping!

With such an excellent image who could not have expected Bron to win! The Does My Blog Look Good In This photo competition for July had a record number of entries all expertly handled by Grab Your Fork. The panel of judges selected this wonderful picture as the overall winner. Next months competition moves, as it does each month, to a new host and will be announced shortly.

Hopefully, you had a chance to take a look at the gallery of entries for this past month's Does my blog look good in this? photography contest. If so, you'll know that the competition was very tough. Judges spend many grueling (drooling?) hours scrutinizing and rating the pictures before the scores were calculated and the winners were determined. We actually featured the winning entry here at Slashfood weeks before it was entered!

 The overall winners were:
1. Baked Strawberry Pudding
2. Cinnamon Sugar Beignets
3. Blueberry Tarts with Lemon Cream
4. Beet Risotto with Fresh Garlic and Fava Beans
5. Spirale di filo ai Pistacchi

Pictured: Fairly Easy Fairy Cakes (the recipient of the viewer's choice award)

Now here is one set of delicious food porn images that simply MUST make you hungry!

Not sure how I discovered the site and there isn't much in the way of information of the photographer behind it, so I can only assume he is a pro. The quality of the images are inspirational. But this being a photo gallery site there are no details of the food, no recipes either of course.

The gallery is named after the photographer: Matthew Klein.  As with many of these showcasing/promotional sites the design is rather fun too.

I have just posted this over on our Digital Photographer blog but I thought it worth repeating here - The Observer, in conjunction with Seeds of Change, is hosting a food photography competition with prizes up to £10,000.

FOr all you budding foodporn merchants: you need to impress! They have set up three categories: Food and People, Food and Thought, and Food, Glorious Food. So plenty of opportunities for demonstrating your creativity. Entrants can submit up to 5 photos per category, and short listed exhibitors will receive a subscription to Practical Photographer magazine. UK only I believe.

Entries are due by June 30th, and can be submitted on-line.

Aussie based Tomatom has just posted the results from the hotly contested Does My Blog Look Good In This photo competition. Ignoring the fact that two winning entries came from the same person (the rules state just one entry per person/blog per month) the standard of entries was really great for this round. Ed has posted a spreadsheet of the results with comments from the two judges - Terry Durack (restaurant reviewer for The Independent on Sunday in London and European editor of Gourmet Traveller) and Jill Dupleix (The Times cook in London).

The winning photo really is excellent, I hope you agree. It was entered by Lucullian Delights. The next round, now accepting entries, is being hosted by Nika's Culinaria.

 

Arugula is sort of a plain, not very glamorous green all by itself, but Bea at La Tartine Gourmande, who has recipes in both English and French for some awesome food and takes incredible photos, has made arugula downright hot and sexy by spicing and sauteing them with soft, smooth creamy avocados. The photo of Poêlée d'avocat et de roquette épicée - Spiced Sautéed Avocado and Arugula is gorgeous, of course, but it's pretty amazing to see a dish that has cooked avocados!