Thread by @LRBbookshop

had an astonishing conversation with a food photographer who's worked on a load of big recipe books - don't want to say which but you'd have heard of them - who told me something fascinating about prawns

prawns are slightly bioluminescent, which means they're impossible to photograph properly. but they're needed all the time, in photographs of paella etc.

there's a single company which has invested a great deal of money in genetically-engineered prawns to solve this problem - they've produced six of them so far

so every time you see a photo of prawns in a recipe book, they are almost certainly the same six prawns. if you look at enough photos you can get to recognise them quite reliably

here, for instance - study the prawn at 3 o'clock on the left-hand picture (hairy bikers paella) - it's patently the same as the lowest one beneath the lemon in the pic on the right (jamie oliver)

here's nigella's. notice anything familiar about the prawn at the top (tail protruding slightly over dish)?? that's right, it's our old friend the lowest prawn from the hairy bikers photo

claudia roden. working clockwise from top centre: the 1st prawn is jamie oliver's 3rd, the 2nd prawn is JO's 1st, the 3rd prawn is JO's 5th, the 4th prawn is under calamari so hard to make out but prob JO's 2nd. etc

rukmini iyer's paella photo shows the hazards of not using stunt prawns. due to bioluminescence interfacing with the camera flash, all the prawns have become so transparent they are completely invisible