They say a picture says a thousand words, and that's a good thing because if you're looking at Chris Connolly's photos on Foodspotting, you'll be left with no words at all. I first came across Chris' work a month ago and I revisit his profile from time to time to see the latest lucky dish to be captured by his lens. It's like stepping into a gallery where you reflect, not on what's on paper, but what's on a plate.

By day, Chris is a user experience designer in the San Francisco Bay Area, currently leading the user experience for a project called Tunerfish. By mealtime, however, he's one of our most active Foodspotters, which gained him a place among our first hundred Super Spotters who were announced yesterday. Here is our food pic-focused Q&A with the photog himself.

You've been to some of the most renowned restaurants in California. Is that where you're from?

I'm actually from Arizona, which is a desolate land in terms of food culture (although I've heard it's become better over the years). I spent some time in the Los Angeles area before moving up to the SF Bay Area, which is where I fell in love with food and the culture around it. There are so many amazing places up here, and the culture of emphasizing simple, local ingredients really shines through in the end products.

Which foods do you think are the most photogenic?

Desserts and cocktails tend to be pretty easy shots, meaning you don’t have to try hard to make it look good. As for main courses - anything with a lot of green, leafy bits tend to photograph well. Also, put anything on a pure white plate, and it will photograph well as long as you’ve got good light.

Seeing that you take quite a few photos at high-end restaurants, what has your experience been like as a customer with a camera?

Largely very good. Most high-end restaurants have no issues with you breaking out a digital SLR camera as long as you follow some basics. Always attempt to ask if you can photograph - 99% of the time, they’ll give you the green light - and never use flash. If you don’t disrupt other diners' experience, and don’t let the act of photographing your meals ruin your own experience, then there is little harm in it. Also, restaurants tend to like when their creations are photographed well – I just hope I’m doing their food justice.

The Foodspotting team is in awe of the Salad Emmanuelle photo you took at Benu. What camera and lens did you use? What was the post-production process like for that photo?

I shoot all of my shots with a Canon 5D Mark II camera, and most of my food shots are with my trusty 50mm 1.4 lens. Post-processing is all done with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop – but with the 5D Mark II, you don’t need to do much work to make the food look good. It’s mainly just color correction and centering photos within Foodspotting’s wacky (and lovable) square crop. I think that photo just required a bit of color and contrast alteration. Glad you like it!

It looks like you've been eating a lot of dessert, breakfast, chicken, and ice cream. Would you say those four foods sum you up pretty well?

Oddly enough, I’m not a huge dessert guy, but it does tend to photograph well, so I always end up posting those shots. Breakfast food, yes, I can eat it at any hour of the day. Sadly, my favorite food of the moment is Korean BBQ burrito, which does not tend to photograph as well.

Any tips for aspiring food photographers?

I suppose the biggest thing is learning to control light. Try to pick outside tables with lots of natural light. If your table doesn’t have good light, don’t be afraid to adjust your table’s lighting so that you can get your shot. Also, be patient and respectful to the restaurant staff. More often than not, they’ll stay out of your way. In some cases, they even help by removing unnecessary items from the table to help you get a better shot. Also, come out to the Bay Area. We have great food and great light over here :)

First of all, we've partnered with the awesome Thrillist to create a series of guides to point you to their recommendations. In celebration, Thrillist is giving away a $500 Whole Foods Shopping Spree to one lucky spotter. Follow the Thrillist guides and enter here for a chance to win.

Now, you may recall that we asked our users to help us identify the first group of Super Spotters. Super Spotters are those within our community who have made significant contributions to make Foodspotting such a great resource. Today, I'm very happy to introduce to you our first 100 Super Spotters!

It took us some time to sift through all the votes and run our Super Spotter Super Algorithm, which looked at a bunch of things including points and activity level within the community. After much analysis we've finally got it down to our initial group of 100 Super Spotters. Yes, it's a tiny group for now, but we're hoping this is a good start to help us pilot the program. Drumroll please...

And here they are :)

This is just our first class of 100 Super Spotters, and we plan to open nominations in several months. In the meantime, keep spotting to earn more points on Foodspotting. Share foods that you recommend and take part in the great dialogue that happens across the site. Remember: The more others want and nom your sightings, the more points you receive. Happy Foodspotting!

While sorting through the election returns here in the US, we're reminded that there are many productive things that state legislatures do, such as declaring official state foods. Picturing congressmen and women beaming with pride, nominating prized fruits, vegetables and confections that reflect the culinary legacy of their state, reassures us that our elected officials are Foodspotters at heart.

Some notable state foods:
Kutchen - State Dessert, South Dakota (Somebody spot this!)
Fry Bread - State Bread, South Dakota (Pictured below.)
Peach - State Fruit, Georgia
Vidalia Sweet Onion - State Vegetable, Georgia
Grits - State Prepared Food, Georgia
Natchitoches meat pie - State Meat Pie, Louisiana (they take this seriously in LA.)
Blue Crabs - State Crab, Maryland (Watch our blue crab video!)
Ice Cream Cone - State Dessert, Missouri (Don't we all want ice cream to be our state dessert?)
Barbecued Pork - State Meal #1, Oklahoma
Chicken Fried Steak - State Meal #2, Oklahoma
Sausages & Gravy - State Meal #3, Oklahoma. And the list goes on...
Jell-O - State Snack, Utah
Nachos & Cheese - State Snack, Texas (Both qualify as Amy's Stupidly Simple Snacks.)

Complete List of U.S. state foods, via Wikipedia!

What state food are you most proud of? Have you spotted it yet?

*sung to the tune of Vanilla Ice, of course

If you follow us on Twitter and Facebook, you may have seen that I recently vacationed in Iceland - a week in Reykjavik, to be exact, and absolutely adored it. The weather was a pain-inducing cold, but the landscapes and skyscapes I witnessed were more than worth it.

I took Spot with me, and we ate our way through town - including quirky foods like reindeer burger (juicy, gamey and very tasty) and smoked puffin (interesting flavor, really really dark red in colour and consistency was like the raw part of seared duck, unfortunately the restaurant was too dark to get a good pic).

And no, I didn't get to eat the fermented shark, but DID get to try an Icelandic hot dog - underneath a layer of sweet mustard and mayo-y goodness sits a pile of delicious crispy fried onion pieces. Yep, you can always count on me to go halfway across the world and still find a hot dog to eat - in my defense, it's recommended as one of the city's must-eats by everyone Icelandic :)

Aside from some interesting ingredients (like whale and those mentioned above), cuisine in Bjork's homeland was surprisingly similar to food you'd find in America - a good example is a "truck" breakfast, served at two of the cafes I visited.

Seafood was super duper fresh, as to be expected on a coastal city like Reykjavik, and maybe even more so because the Icelandic currency boasts fish on it :) In fact, I ate some of the tastiest lox I've ever had.

Thinking of taking a trip abroad somewhere? I highly recommend visiting this gorgeous country. None of the iPhone photos here do the scenery justice.

In the spirit of Halloween (and because we love babies, dogs, and Katy Perry, apparently...) we put together a small collage of clever food costumes for you! Sure, you can be pizza or French fries or a green M&M again, but I think you'll score way more points with the opposite or same sex if you make a Kikkoman soy sauce hat and wear it.

So, what are you going to be for Halloween?

Spotted by Rodney

Alexa, our co-founder and CEO, often Tumbles about stuff that look like other stuff and this is one of our favourite stuffs that look like other stuffs to have graced the Foodspotting pages. Plus, it's Halloween week, which gives us an excuse to write about food that has dressed up like something else ;)

Let's take a look at what's inside, shall we? For the bun, Burger Bar halved a warm donut (mmm... donut...!), inserted chocolate ganache in place of a beef patty, added passion fruit coulis for ketchup, and a tangy jello-like layer for cheese! Of course, what burger is complete without some veggies? For tomatoes, they substituted strawberry, lettuce magically became mint, and kiwi cleverly replaces pickles. And for a delicious price of $3.95, it might become the burger I choose over just your everyday beef burger.

Greetings Foodspotters!

This week I'm headed to The Emerald Isle, aka my grandfather's native land of Ireland, home of verdant fields, leprechauns, red deer, Cillian Murphy, and arguably the best beer in the world. Guinness car bombs, anyone?

Specifically, I will be in Dublin and on this upcoming Sunday evening, I'd like to host our second international Foodspotting eat-up at the historic Leo Burdock's Pub, which several locals tell us has the best fish & chips in town.

Join me for some munching and mingling. By the end of the night, we may or may not be singing one all of these. So what do you say? 8PM - er, 20:00 me lads? Lassies?

- Soraya

UPDATE We were informed that Leo Burdock's is just a takeaway spot and may not be conducive for mingling. Soraya will meet everyone out front at 8PM before moving on to a bar nearby. Follow Soraya on Twitter (@sorayadarabi) for the location in case you arrive after eight! - Amy

(Photo by sergiocruz on Flickr)

In the spirit of Halloween, we're kicking the week off with a Candy A to Z!

Pronunciation : kan-dee

Common Varieties : any type of confection made with sugar, syrup, or other sweeteners. Often combined with chocolate, fruit, or nuts.

Where do cavities come from? Though lollipops, bubble gum, chocolate, and M&M's seem ubiquitous, it's not often we wonder where it all came from. Turns out, candy making goes back in time to ancient Greece, Turkey, and Rome. It was not until the Middle Ages, however, that doctors learned how to mask the bitter taste of medicine with sweetness, a practice that, thankfully, continues today. Eventually, the British called confections "sweetmeats," while Americans came to call them "candy" derived from the Arabic word qandi. Over the years, candy in its various forms gained popularity, but it was not until 1851 at the Great Exhibition in London when "French-style" candies with cream centers were first displayed. Then, in the mid-1870s, the discovery of milk chocolate in Switzerland by Daniel Peter helped pave the way for the candy bar, which became a late nineteenth century phenomenon in the States.

Today, candy is an integral part our cooking vocabulary. Take candied bacon, candied yams, and how can we forget candy apples for Halloween? Sure, temptations abound, especially around the holidays, but few things say "Let's Celebrate!" than stuffing our face with something sweet.

Click here to see where candy has been spotted recently.

(Because I am no candy historian, I based my research on various web sources including The Food Timeline, Laura Stradley and What's Cooking America, and Chocolates by Leopold.)