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If you want to blog about food, knowing how to cook or bake isn’t the only skill you need. What you make might taste great, but if you can’t show that through your pictures on the Internet, no one will ever really know.

Four Indonesian friends whose food blog required them not only to master the kitchen but also the art of expressing their creations digitally, started a small supplement that has grown into a full-fledged passion. They started with a cellphone camera, then a pocket camera, and finally a professional digital single-lens reflex camera, and now their work has materialized into a book: “Food Photography Made Easy.”

After years of practice, Dita Wistarini, Riana Ambarsari and Arfi Binsted decided to write the book, which is both a guide and an inside look into the work they put into their blog “Yummy!!” (last-bite.blogspot.com). Rounding out the team is former journalist Irra Fachriyanti.

Shooting food might seem a less popular topic than fashion or wedding photography, but the friends see a good picture as a reward for their labors in the kitchen. Dita, Riana and Arfi seem to care about presentation as much as any world-class chef, and that attention to detail comes through in their book. If what they write online tells people how to prepare something delicious, the book explains how to capture food visually.

Make no mistake: These are bloggers, not professional photographers. These women shoot their food at home, right after it comes out of the kitchen. There is no professional studio, just a well-lit corner of the house. Most of the time they use natural light with simple, homemade foil reflectors to assist with the light balance. But it all meshes perfectly with the central aim of the book, which is to make photography easy and doable.

The bloggers start by breaking down seemingly-complicated photography terms into simple Indonesian. They start with the basics, such as “megapixels” and “exposure,” and for the latter they include sample photos to show how different settings produce lighter or darker images. They also get into composition — the rule of thirds, simplicity and arranging cakes and cookies to look appealing.

The book describes visual concepts for breakfast, seasonal, children’s food, outdoor brunch, preparation and healthy foods. A photo of children’s food, for example, might include crayons and a coloring book in a blurry background. Outdoor brunch requires making the best use of a natural background while still keeping the food as the main focus point. Everyday objects such as dolls, newspapers or chairs might not have anything to do with eating, but they give a sense of human interest to further stylize and deepen the mood of the image.

At the beginning of the book, the authors mention how advertisements often use fake food to produce more appealing textures and colors, but that in their book all the food shot was real and edible.

Also included is a chapter on digital photo editing. If you think Photoshop is too complicated, the book provides a guide for editing photos online using Picnik, which is a lot easier to understand.

Without the book, if you were new to photography, chances are you would have to try to figure out these strange but crucial terms by asking a friend or looking them up online. But the answers wouldn’t come with such clear examples, and you would have to practice hard to learn how things work. In “Food Photography Made Easy,” you will see examples right next to the explanations, helping to communicate the basics.

Since the only way to access something like that is usually in an expensive photography book or magazine, at Rp 74,800 ($8.50), this book is a good deal.

'Food Photography Made Easy'
By Empat Rana
Published by Elex Media Komputindo
In Bahasa Indonesia
Price: Rp 74,800