What's Behind the Food Photography Trend? [INFOGRAPHIC]

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Why? In many cases, people are documenting their lives -- or at least the gustatory portion of it. There are other reasons, too. Sometimes, it’s to celebrate the completion of a dish or a special occasion. Some folks are photographing "food art."

At least once a month, 52% of people take photos with their mobile phones; another 19% upload those photos to the web. There's enough of that group practicing "foodtography" to support the website Foodspotting, as well as a 2,500-member Foodtography group on Flickr. Photoblogging apps like Instagram and the latest, photo-enabled version of Foursquare are likely to further fuel the trend.

Reasoning that marketers should pay more attention to such nonverbal web communication, interactive agency 360i recently did a deep dive into the data and found a few constants. One: People are almost never in the pictures; only 10% of hundreds of photos that 360i analyzed for this infographic included human beings. Two: It's rare to see any brand mention -- that happened just 12% of the time.

So what are we to take away from this? The agency isn’t completely sure, but according to a blog entry posted Monday, it sees a huge opportunity for brands. If you’re a marketer who’s hungry for new insights, this might be a good place to dig in.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Lara604