Mojo Bar Offenbach — Restaurant and food photography
Interior and drinks photography at the Mojo Bar. Restaurant and food photography: Offenbach am Main. The counter is the frame the whole set turns on. It is lit…
The Mojo Bar in Offenbach am Main, photographed before opening and in its own light. The room works on contrasts that have to come together in the frame: the long counter with its backlit bottle wall and dried flowers overhead, a Vespa used as a serving table with two glasses on the rack, tiki mugs with carved faces, a red wall telephone in a wall of planting — and two neon signs, “don't kill my vibe” and “#PROXWRAME”, which in the dark are the only light source.
The counter is the frame the whole set turns on. It is lit from below by a warm band running along the stools; behind it the bottle wall stands in cold shelf light, and above it the dried flowers hang into the ceiling as a dark mass. Three layers, three brightnesses, and none of them can be allowed to go. The exposure goes on the warm band — it is the brightest thing in the room — and the bottles are brought back out of the depth.
The timing is part of the method. Before the doors open every stool is straight, every glass polished, and the neon is not hidden behind heads. A bar with guests in it is a different job and a different date; try both in one evening and you get the weaker half of each.
The props are what separates this bar from any other. A Vespa as a table, carved tiki mugs, a telephone in the planting — these are the things a guest photographs and forwards. So they are shot individually and large, not merely as detail in a wide view.
And neon is never corrected. A white balance that makes the pink lettering neutral turns half the room green. The neon is allowed to glow the way it glows — it is the reason somebody takes a picture of that wall in the first place.
- Place
- Offenbach am Main
