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If your best culinary adventures are being devoured in about as much time as it takes to watch a sitcom, take a picture -- it'll last longer.

Thanks to the lower costs and easy preview features of digital cameras, taking a photo of your food before you eat it is replacing the toast as a pre-meal ritual. As food has risen from respected sustenance to cultural currency, taking pictures of the stuff has moved from a fringe behaviour to a hot trend.

San Francisco's Pim Techamuanvivit, who runs the acclaimed food blog Chez Pim, recalls a summer trip to Paris where she met up with two of her fellow bloggers at a local two-star restaurant.

"When the food arrived, the three of us whipped out our respective cameras at exactly the same moment to take a shot of our beautiful food," she says in an e-mail interview. "We had a good laugh about it.

"Clotilde [Dusoulier, of the blog Chocolate and Zucchini] said, 'Other people say grace before they eat -- we food bloggers do it with our digital cameras.' "

"The fact that digital cameras offer virtually unlimited amounts of shots without the previously associated cost of film and development certainly has set people free to experiment," says Simone Paddock, a professional architecture photographer in central Oregon, who has expanded her repertoire to include food photography thanks to increased customer demand and her own culinary desires.

But the fad goes well beyond the passions of bloggers and pro shooters; it's also part of a major cultural obsession with documenting -- and sharing -- the minutiae of our daily lives and travels.

As I'm reading over Techamuanvivit's e-mail messages, I receive another from my friend Andree.

Freshly returned to Edmonton from a trip to northern China, she has fired me her vacation snapshots. Among the typical pics of temples, camels and the Forbidden City, there they are: Peking duck, a platter of deep-fried snake, metal tubs full of Turpan raisins and a bowl of camel hoof tendon.

I'm reminded of my own trip to China two years ago and the moment when I started taking pictures of my food. Afterward, I had trouble reasoning with myself. Why had I just taken a half-dozen photos of a bearded Shanghai crab, soon to be dismembered and devoured?

Eating I understand, but why did I feel the need to immortalize this transient, perishable subject? After all, by the power and pleasure of my consumption, I was essentially just conspiring to turn the thing into poop. Shouldn't it be the fragility of the creation we are really enticed by?

I guess the allure mostly boils down to the loving charge of salivating anticipation and how much we want to hold on to it.

"You eat with your eyes first," says veteran food photographer Lou Manna, who shot food for The New York Times for 15 years.

"Food is emotional," says Manna, who visited Toronto in the fall to help some media types figure out this exploding amateur trend.

"It's something that makes you remember events and holidays and there are technical ways you can bring out that emotion."

It can also bring out that emotion in others.

Techamuanvivit says the food photos on her blog can take on a voyeuristic aspect.

"A lot of my readers get a kick out of following my crazy eating life," she says. "You don't have to leave your desk to follow me right to El Bulli or The French Laundry. It's not as good as being there, certainly, but it beats staring at an Excel spreadsheet any day."

She recently ditched her full-time gig as an IT professional in Silicon Valley to craft her blog full-time. Right now, she's writing and shooting her way through some of the best eateries in Europe.

But how does she get up the nerve to whip up such gauche gear as a digital camera in such a haute spot as The French Laundry?

Techamuanvivit says her decision to "just go for it" in Strasbourg's gastronomic temple Le Buerehiesel eased her fears.

"Instead of being offended, [the wait staff] thought it was rather fun," she says.

"The maître d' dropped by the table to joke with us that he had gone back to the kitchen and told chef to send out particularly pretty plates to our table."

Of course, conquering a phobia of exhibitionism doesn't mean the average gourmandizer is any good at the fine art of photography.

On the award-winning and very funny food blog The Amateur Gourmet, webmaster Adam Roberts recently mused about how a link to his site described it as "Really good food blog, terrible photography."

His plea to help ditch this mixed handle elicited more than a dozen detailed responses spitting out the basics of food photography: lots of light, a decent camera, get close and use the "macro" close-up setting.

But the best pointer is to be brave.

"For me, a digital camera is a great learning tool," says Techamuanvivit, who has some of the more enticing food shots on the Web.

"I snap photos of everything, and if most of them turn out badly, I only have to hit delete to get rid of them. There are no print photos to be evidence for my woeful lack of skills."

I could have used some of these tips earlier.

Hauling around a traditional 35-millimetre SLR on a recent trip to Argentina, I ham-fistedly reduced the most charmed stretch of culinary greatness I have experienced to a series of over-flashed, blurry, washed-out shots of now-indeterminate cuts of steak.

Well, at least it tasted awesome. And when it comes down to it, we really eat with our mouths best.

Shooting tips

Get started: Shooting food with a digital camera has the same fundamentals as all photography. The better the light source, the better your shot will look. If you're taking your picture on a patio in the shade, you're made.

Get lit: "Direct flash is verboten," says professional food photographer Lou Manna. The light from your typical on-camera flash will bounce off the more reflective surfaces and show up as hot spots on your finished product. As well, it will wash out most of the picture's details and sap the colour. Still, you may need some extra light, so try partly reflecting the flash with a small piece of white paper.

Get close: Unless you're looking to savour a side of Black Angus or a contest-winning stack of pies, you're going to want to get nice and close your subject. Don't just zoom in; get your face right in there. Since you'll likely be indoors and not using a direct flash, a zoomed-in shot will greatly increase the chance of your shaky hands (maybe you shouldn't drink so much) blurring the shot. Putting your elbows on the table will also cut down on blurry shots. If you have a mini-tripod, all the better.

Get low: While generally frowned upon when taking pictures of women over 30, in food photography a low angle greatly emphasizes the achievement of the chef. If you take pictures of your subject from directly above, it will flatten out the definition. "Food has become more architectural," Manna says. "Shooting it from below gives it more height."

Get busy: While you don't want to fire off wildly, your chosen chow will tend to get less appealing the longer it sits in front of you. There is a very short period of time "to style and shoot the food before it crosses the peak of its visual appeal," food photographer Simone Paddock says. Anyway, you still want to eat this stuff, don't you? Don't let it get cold.