A large staff group shot needs a bit of pre-planning. This session greatly benefited from color coordinated clothing. Body language is a subtle way to bring the comfortable warmth of a large group and takes patience to arrange.
Lighting for a large group gives depth. We used 64″ Paul C Buff PLM umbrellas – one on each side.
Nothing like being alone on a rooftop shoot, especially when the client is asking for a few creative shots.
The client hoped to have the Los Angeles skyline as a background to the rooftop system they had installed on this industrial building. In these two shots the skyline seems close, despite how far away it was. The 70-200 mm Canon lens is a long lens which compresses the background-bringing it closer in the images.
Shot with the Canon 35 mm lens you can see how far away the skyline actually was located.
Using the Canon 35 mm 1.4 lens let us grab this creative shot.
Talk about cold!
This industrial photo shoot had special needs. Part of which was the temperature of -4 degrees. It took a team of 3 to make this shot work and time was the driving factor, as Southern Californians, we aren’t acclimated for cold. The outside temperature was over 80 degrees.
After an all day shoot this was the last shot due to the temperature, noting the extreme temperature change would be asking a lot of the camera. The lift operator suspended the photographer upwards with the client sprinting through the aisles to trigger the motion sensor-ed facility lights. This gave a window of 30 seconds to grab the shot before the lights shut off. The temperature was taxing to our breathing and stress on the camera equipment. It took 8 hours for the camera body and lens temperature to return to room temperature, no damage to the camera or lens. We were in and out in about 5 minutes, taking 3 shots.
Using a Canon 6d with a 14 mm 2.8 Canon lens.
This freezer operates between 35-50 degrees for refrigerated foods. We shot in here before the subzero freezer and it was breeze.
Time to update your website? Make it personal by adding photos of the people your clients interact with over the phone or when visiting your business. Stepping away from the classic group staff photo and adding a little creativity with a blend of Southern California casual can give your website personality and an air of friendliness. Let your website speak for your business with staff photography.
What to do with your service truck photo? You spent a great deal of thought and cost in creating your moving billboard – the photo turned out great, next? A slick, clean extraction of your service vehicle is a great advertising tool. You can create beautiful ads by lay text over the image, or drop it into any kind of background. It all begins with getting a properly lit photo. The “magic” lies in the planning. The extraction yields an image easily manipulated in many creative ways. Read more about website photography.
Every business needs a video, whether promotional or demonstration. In this basic video using existing light, the videographer did not interfere with workers’ productivity. Shot at multiple location sites, including the home store, he stood back and filmed them doing their jobs. In the post editing process we recorded the voice over (at the request of the client-we did the voice over ourselves). Along with photo inserts, titles and original music we completed this basic video production.
Typically the proper way to shoot a product set up like this is to have 2 separate shots and composite these in Photoshop. It’s impossible to properly exposure for the box and not blow out the white pearls. For this shoot we didn’t have time to remove the pearls as this was rush job. We elevated the camera to a high angle using a macro lens, used an overhead diffused light source with a silk scrim. We used another light source in front – to highlight the front of the box and the top inside of the box. Once we properly exposed the light we stack focused with about 20 shots from top to bottom. We would like the box interior whiter, but couldn’t do it in the time we had, so this shot was usable. Generally these types of jewelry shots require an enormous amount of time get the right lighting with the proper exposure.
We had enough time to properly execute this shot, which requires two separate set ups. The first setup was to light and properly expose the ring. We only used an overhead light source with a silk scrim for this, stack focusing with about 10 shots using a 2.8 macro lens. For the second setup we removed the ring using three light sources for the outside and inside of the box. We stack focused with about 10 images. In Photoshop we put the two shots together achieving the whiter box interior.
Product on white background is the standard today. Minimal stack focusing is needed for this black leather belt leaving the edges slightly out of focus for an attractive image with depth. We used a transparent surface using three studio flashes – one overhead with a silk scrim, two soft boxes on either side with flags to block the light. A white background is lit by one flash meticulously placed, together yielding the pure white background we’re after.
This diffuser product begins with a lush reflective foreground and organic items to complement the style of this product. Shooting on a specialized surface gives the refection we were after fading into white. This is achieved by a lot of light precisely directed.
For a dramatic style we pulled in a textured background, a simple brick and keeping our organic theme – a few accents to give this diffuser a new face!
Read more about product styling.
The beauty of clear shiny glass. Lighting glass requires a toolbox of gadgets to achieve the final product image on white. A specialized surface gives the reflection in the foreground at the base of the glass diffuser. In order to keep any shadow from interfering with the transparency looking front to back means flooding the background with light and strategically placed strobe flashes. While striving for glass on white be careful not to lose the definition of the bottle. We used a number of light modifiers and redirected light as need to create this final image of lightness and clarity.