Shutter bug

Bump into Mette Nielsen at one of the many farmers markets she browses, and chances are she'll have a camera in her hands. The Copenhagen native (and avid gardener and cook) didn't set out to be a food photographer — her St. Louis Park studio bustles with work for Target, Lunds and Byerly's and other corporate clients — but while working at the former Donaldsons department store in the early 1980s, "Everyone wanted to shoot fashion, and I wanted to shoot the pots and pans," she recalls. "Someone told me that there were food photographers, and I said, 'Really?'" That was then, this is now. Her latest in a string of high-profile jobs: the gorgeous "The Spoonriver Cookbook" (view the recipe online). Coming up next: A Birchwood Cafe cookbook.