Tcinsa, you can easily intimidate yourself with that idea.
The photos show one way the dish can look. Not how it is supposed to look.
It's supposed to look the way you want it to.
In the better cookbooks and magazines the pix are done with a team that includes food stylists and other graphics professionals. Their job is to make the dish look at appealing as possible.
No problem.
But often the photo you see is different from what the recipe author intended. I see a lot of high-end cookbooks as part of my work. In many of them the chef actually includes plating recomendations with the recipe. Then you look at the photo and wonder if the stylist and photographer actually read the recipe.
I love many of those photos, no question. But they concern me because many home cooks make a dish that doesn't look like that and think they have done it wrong. You don't want to fall into that trap.
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