With all the dinning out, blogging about dinning out, and photographing of food I partake in, you’d think I’d have a grasp on how to take pictures of food whilst dining… the polite way. I always want to take pictures of particularly yummy or visually pleasing meals, but it always seems so obnoxious. A photographer I am not.

So when I read this post on Serious Eats, I felt like they were blogging right to me:

I’m one of those people who always whips out a camera when I eat out for possible blogging purposes (besides that I’ll forget what I’ve done if I don’t take photos—food-related or not)… One part of me thinks, “I hope I’m not annoying other people too much,” while the other part thinks, “Oh god, I just need one good shot of this burger…no, that was bad, I need another [moves the burger]…and another [moves the burger]…”

I usually let this fear of annoying other people prevent me from taking the picture at all. Or I rush to take it, and then they suck and I end up deleting them.

Helena Echlin from Table Manners lays out some guidelines that I found helpful:

First, don’t take multiple shots from multiple angles, kneel on the banquette, or rearrange the table. Jeffrey Porter, cowriter of the blog Drink Eat Love, says he limits himself to “four or five shots.” Besides creating an unnecessary disturbance, your dinner might get cold. At Alinea, one dish, called Hot Potato Cold Potato, has contrasting temperatures. By the time a diner has snapped the dish from every angle, it might as well be called “lukewarm potato.”

Forgo the flash, as Chowhounds advise. At Alinea, when diners have complained about other parties’ obsessive photography, it’s the flash that has bothered them. (Also, says Dang, it washes out the food.)

Finally, know when to put the camera away. On some occasions, your focus shouldn’t be on your plate—like on a special date, for instance. It’s not very romantic if one of you is obviously using the excursion as a way to get new fodder for a blog.

Word. Though to be honest, I think I’ll just stick to going on flickr to search out the pictures of others. Who me? Passive aggressive?