You can take food photos like the pros

USED TO BE, cameras would come out at restaurants only for a family photo or special-occasion snap. These days, even the cheese is saying cheese.

In keeping with the food-porn frenzy that goes along with restaurant reality shows, celebrity chefs and a navel-gazing obsession with farm-to-table cuisine, taking pictures of dinner is de rigueur, whether it's a chili dog or a prime rib of beef stretched across the plate. Seems like everybody's a food paparazzo these days. It's enough to make a vodka sauce blush.

All you have to do is take a look at shutter-nut groups like I Ate This on Flickr, with more than 432,000 images logged by 24,000 members, and the popular Foodspotting, a share site with 16,000 Facebook likes and its own mobile app, to know that your Korean taco had better be ready for its close-up. Self-appointed reviewers are another group, eager to post their musings and macaroni mug shots on sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor. Add in bloggers and foodie professionals, and a person could almost forget to eat.

The problem is, most of these photos are less than appetizing. Unlike a professional food photographer, the average salad shooter hasn't a clue about lighting, composition and angle. She just wants her Facebook friends to know that she's eating just-picked micro greens. Although some restaurateurs and diners find this obsession with chronicling one's king crab annoying, others think it's cool.

"I do it all the time myself," said London Restaurant owner Terry McNally. For her, like many food snappers, it's all about the iPhone. "I got the iPhone 4 because it had a better camera," she said. "I'm most happy when I'm eating, so if I'm loving a dish, I'm tweeting and posting about it." She even has an editing app called Photogene, which lets her crop and adjust the picture right on her phone, before she posts.

Inquirer restaurant critic Craig LaBan loves the trend and calls himself one of the worst offenders. Now, instead of using a bulky SLR camera, LaBan takes pictures on his iPhone for publication and for research purposes. "If anything, the proliferation of amateur food-photographer fanatics has only made my own ministrations at the table blend in as the new normal."