Melburnians' obsession with photographing food has spawned its own festival.
Melbourne Food Porn Festival organiser Jackie Doran said the event would be a celebration of the city's beautiful food.
The festival, which has been put on by a restaurant review website, consists of a competition to find the best social media food photographs taken across Melbourne.
The 40 photos chosen as the best will be exhibited at a gallery in South Melbourne on May 18.
"There'll be a grand prize winner for the best food porn in Melbourne," Ms Doran told 774 ABC Melbourne's Red Symons.
Eateries designing meals to be #foodporn
Ms Doran said, in general, people in the hospitality industry had changed their attitudes towards amateur food photography.
A few years ago some Melbourne restaurants were considering banning photography at their dining tables.
Ms Doran said many venues now actively encouraged the practice.
"A lot of restaurateurs are designing their food for it to be photographed before it's eaten," she said.
Ms Doran said making food that looked good on Instagram was a form of "next level marketing".
"Back in the day you would just tell your friend about this great meal you had," she said.
"Now you take a photo of it and share it across all your social media channels."
Burger craze coming to an end, judge says
Ms Doran said entries to the Melbourne Food Porn Festival had so far been "kind of a mixed bag".
"There's either the food that's so beautifully presented, and very delicate; edible flowers and floating plums etcetera," she said.
"Or there's the meals that have an incredibly high calorie count, so the burgers that have eight patties and 12 slices of cheese."
She said Melbourne had definitely gone through a burger craze recently.
"We might just be at the end of it, I think," she said.
"Some of the photos coming in of burgers are Frankenstein-esque.
"They're so big that it boggles the mind how you'd actually eat it."
