Pardon my cattiness, but ...

... I'm fucking brilliant.

I love photography. Love. It. In a perfect world, I would get paid to travel the world and take photos of beautiful landscape, and thousands of people would buy my pictures. I'd be "Ansela Adams," as a friend once (overgraciously) called me.

But the little secret I love most about landscape photography: As beautiful and sentimental as I find the photos I take on our travels, the thing about landscape photography is that I really didn't do anything. God did all the creating; I just do the capturing. If I just get a good angle or an artistic focus with the right composition, all of a sudden I look like a photographic genius.

Food photography, on the other hand? That's tough.

I was recently asked to help out with some food photography. As in, BE a food photographer. For menus. And ads. And a website.

Whoa. (I seriously instantly thought of L and GFF. They're both constantly posting mouth-watering pictures of fabulous food. If those were my pictures, I'd have felt a little more confident.)

I was honored and excited, but nervous. I mean, I've always taken photos for myself. If someone else likes them, perfect. If not, it doesn't matter. But this time, if I screwed up, I'd be costing someone else money and time because there would have to be a do-over. And given the people who were asking this of me, a do-over would not be awesome.

Without going into too much detail, because of other conflicts, someone else wound up doing the photo shoot. I went along, though, for another purpose, and I ultimately played backup photographer.

Today, I saw my photos and the primary photographer's photos. I got some pretty decent ones, but I was anxious to see the primary's images.  I don't mean to brag, but

MINE WERE TOTALLY BETTER!!!

Like, heads and tails better. Like, right thing in focus and perfect amount of sharpness on the main dish, with perfect blur on side dishes.

Who's ready for dinner?

I AM, after looking at these pictures!

I know it sounds mean and bitchy and catty and ugly, but I was just excited for my own little victory. For thinking I couldn't do it and for totally kicking ass.

I love photography.