Think natural light for food pix.

When I worked at a paper, we often had to shoot food pictures. These shots had to be equal to the images commonly appearing in foodie magazines but we had to shoot our pictures in minutes. There were mornings that I shot five food pictures in 25 minutes. To do this one must have some rules. One: Set up the location before the food is ready to be shot. You want to get the picture shot while the food is fresh and hot or cold or glistening or puffed up from the oven or whatever. Two: Use soft window light, if at all possible. (If you need a small aperture for increased depth of field, the powerful, clean light from a softened flash is best.) Another answer is an umbrella or soft box using colour-balanced electronic flash. Another approach is to shoot in a room with white walls and a white ceiling and bounce the flash into a corner where two walls and the ceiling meet - this bounce will provide directional but soft light. The light should come from the between the 11 o'clock and the 1 o'clock position relative to the food. We do not light from below unless we are shooting a scary picture. Monsters, not food, are lit from below. Three: Never use an on-camera straight on strobe with food. Never. For 1/1000th of a second you will have lit your food with the most ghastly light and during this moment you will shoot your pictures. Never do it! Lastly: Tell a story with your picture. It can be a simple story such as, "Cookies cool after baking." But there must be a story. Beautiful plates, classy flatware, elegant table clothes can all be great props. Unless your photography is amazing, don't ever place food on an ugly Formica counter, alone and naked. The image of the turtle cookies would have benefited from the use of a cheap, $10, tripod. It has some annoying camera motion blur.

Ken Wightman

Pear pie is not all that common, but it is uncommonly good.

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I use a simple, almost seven-year-old Canon SD10 Digital ELPH to shoot my food pictures. You do not need a great camera to get exceedingly presentable pictures, but newer cameras with image stabilization are a big plus. Cheers, Rockinon (Ken)