On nights when dinner consists of ramen and protein powder, one of my favorite things to do is to browse curated pictures of food online and dream of what could be. One of the sites I frequent the most is the subsite r/food on Reddit, which has users throughout the world posting pictures of their dinners for others to like and comment on. Sorting by rating, something you quickly pick up on is that the difference between a top post and a mediocre one is usually decided by the composition of the photo. Compare for example, one of the top posts of the month of a bowl of ramen:
and a not as well-received posting of essentially the same thing:
This is just a real-world example of what a difference the elements of lighting, spacing, and placement in pictures can make.