Dark and Moody Food Photography
We are all familiar with the perfectly lit, painstakingly styled studio photos of crisp lettuce or shiny tomatoes like the ones you see in advertising or on food packaging. A new trend has been emerging in food photography for some time now, which is becoming increasingly widespread: The photos are dark with atmospheric light accents on the food and exciting rustic textures. They come across as being honest, spontaneous and have a somewhat melancholy and shabby appeal, making you feel as though you're sitting at an old oak table in the back room of an Italian trattoria having dinner with the padrone. This type of photography has several names: dark and moody, mystic light or also chiaroscuro, an Italian term that originally referred to the strong contrast of light (chiar) and dark (oscuro) in an artwork, famously used in the paintings of Caravaggio or Rembrandt, which creates an intense and often dramatic mood