Photography means painting with light and photographers in the past and present have taken inspirations from various art forms and painting styles. Many present day photographic concepts are based on ancient art forms and architectures. Chiaroscuro is one such style of ancient painting used in ancient Italy and Germany. Chiaroscuro is the Italian translation for light and dark. This term is profoundly used in art to signify the contrast between light and dark. In photography chiaroscuro is also a scheme of lighting with very heavy contrast ratios and lighting ratios above 1:8.

This specific kind of lighting has been increasingly used in photography as well as in cinema. Since the contrast ratio in this kind of lighting is very high and one can only see the dark and light tones and no mid tones, hence it is strongly used in black and white photography. This can be easily accomplished using proven Canon digital cameras, or indeed with any well tested camera model. If you see the picture on left, you can see that the mood created is very strong and conveys a certain feel and ambience to the frame. You can see that the body contours have been highlighted very beautifully and it gives a sense of three dimensional to the frame. Such lighting is generally achieved by throwing a single powerful key light on the subject and a very soft fill with an intensity of 1/8th of the key light. Sometimes the effect is also created by no fill light but that gives harsh shadows and edges rather than a pleasant look.