Dark and Moody Lighting for Food Photography

Pinterest is one of my favourite things because it provides so many new ideas and inspirations for things to try.  This dark moody lighting style is something I saw there and decided it must be done 🙂

This style is more challenging than the light airy version, because you have to control the light a lot more, and in fact, have to introduce darkness and shadows. Here is the behind the scenes shot to explain – there are two large foam core boards at the back and right. Two black cards positioned to throw shadows and you can see my lovely new base that I painted yesterday – thought it would look naff but it looks OK 🙂  The top of my camera is just visible (sorry about the awful iPad image).

As you can see from the setup image above, we have completely taken away the light and added darkness and then controlled the light and shaped it much more.

SO MANY THINGS I LEARNED!!!

• if you have a bright white element like the rind in the lemon – face it slightly away from the sunlight so it exposes correctly
• if you have two similar elements then point them in the SAME direction so they expose evenly
• my window is quite big and I might have been too close to it
• need a bigger mobile shadow board to darken the background – had a lot of light bleed over the top of it
• my dark curtains were also used to my left and behind me to limit the light on the foreground
• it is cheaper in the long run to buy black foam core instead of other options and painting it – plus foamcore is a lot lighter
• stick the foam core to the wall so you don’t have an angle gap of light coming in on the background corners
• painting a black background with two shades of grey makes it look slate grey/blue in the image
• having the right props makes this so much easier – this is my brand new rough cut chopping board (its first photography outing) and in the background is a dark grey linen tea towel  – also making its debut – carefully folded to hide the white lines for this shot

Here is the final shot again – click on it for a larger version – its been edited in LR with a dark moody Kim Klassen preset and had a couple of textures added in PS for a touch of added interest.

This is a very different style for me – how do you feel about the darker style photography?  Works for you?  Not your thing?

Got some tips or advice – love to hear it 🙂

Advertisement