If you’re in the food photography community, or food blogging in general, then names like Katie Quinn Davies (What Katie Ate), Simone Van Den Berg (Junglefrog Cooking), and Helene Dujardin (Tartelette) will sound familiar to you. They’re writers and photographers of food blogs of a caliber you aspire yours to reach someday.

The beginning of a food photographer cum food blogger is always similar. You start by realizing that food, for most of the time, is easier to take pictures of than living subjects. Then you start taking pictures of ready made food and you join a social network of photographers. You then see a handful of beautiful pictures by named photographers and decide to venture into more dangerous waters - food blogging.

For myself, my platforms were as follows: I joined DeviantArt when I was 15, started taking pictures of food when I was 16, joined [now abandoned] Flickr & Picture Social when I was 17 and then Tumblr when I was 19.

In the past and even now, people have said how it’s unfortunate that I may not get the credit for my photography that I should, to which I say bollocks, because achievements come in different forms, some of which don’t necessarily need to be shared (for myself, one of them was when all 3 of the bloggers above followed my Flickr. I was 18 - I think I cried), and I personally am content with where I am with this blog.

Other achievements, however, comes as a surprise after following through some links. Like this one:

As a relatively new blogger, I usually refer followers to those more experienced in the field for tips on recipes and photography tricks. So when I saw that my page was up there, rubbing shoulders with pages from Matt Armendariz (Matt Bites), Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman) and Deb Perelman (Smitten Kitchen)…well it made me pretty happy, because I was always a refer-er, not a refer-ee blog.

It also humbles you, to a certain degree, and make you believe that it’s not always about the equipment and fanfare, but also about motivation, perseverance and a little luck. And to prove it, I’m going to show you Simone’s set-up for a beautiful photoshoot:

I dont think I’ll ever go on a ladder to shoot since I’m pretty scared of heights.

And the beautiful result.

And my humbler set-up, with a window and a dining chair for some height.

And the result:

Not as polished, but I kinda like it that way.

Happy Valentine’s everybody.