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.
Product on a white background has become the standard for product images. Whether to use a full shadow, or slight shadow, or no shadow is the next question. But when you’re ready to show off your product creativity opens a fabulous door. The above photo of spice jars keeps three of the four jars in focus, with a slight out of focus on the third jar, for a subtle statement.
The next photo is a lovely simple composition, still on white for an open, floating feeling, adding the spoon for a touch of lifestyle. A subtle product styling idea.
Still keeping the product styling simple we’ve added an organic feel using wood for the presentation. These are only a few ways to style your product. Keep your own product as an alternative to stock photography for your website.
Finally adding a full background frames the jars using a brick for strong base statement. The first jar has the strength and focus, allowing the other jars to become part of the background. You get the idea of the vast possibilities when you’re ready to take bring your product front and center in your website and promotion.
Amazon has strict requirements for its product photography. All products need to be shot on a white background. Sounds simple until you realize “white” is a precise hex color # 255, 255, 255. While there are multiple ways to achieve this result for this product we used a specialized surface to give a beautiful transparent, “floating” feel. The studio strobes have to be precisely placed to pull this off. Flooding the white background with light bathes the dog whistle in pure white. Just what Amazon desires. Also helpful to our client was a captioned photo of parts. See more product photography photos.
Chrome retail product displays have a striking beauty, even before hanging your product on one! The lovely reflective surface bounces light making it fun to photograph. As with all reflective surfaces the challenge is controlling the light to capture the shiny surface. View more of our catalog photography on our website.
A typical set up includes:
2- Soft Silver Paul C. Buff’s PLMs with diffusion
Paul C Buff’s Einsteins
White background
taken on-site at auto repair shop
As a photographer I can appreciate stock photography. Well lit images, with models, shiny clean cars and wonderful macro photography. For business owners they have been a resource for a long time to get professional photography onto their website. Consider lifestyle photography for polished original images of your business.
As the internet has evolved users have become savvier with higher expectations. In a visual world photos are seen faster than website copy is read, which gives them the potential to deliver a message quicker. Users have become cynical: “Are we supposed to believe that model works at your company? And are these people always that happy discussing one piece of paper?” On top of this skepticism you run the risk of these same images being seen repeatedly on other websites – and worse…a competitor’s site. Show pictures of real customers, your staff, your product, and your location. A professional photographer not only brings proper equipment, but helpful insight into staging scenes to cover all your photo needs from staff to facility, and services.
Use your photos on your website to deliver your message with text laid across the image. Make a bold statement – and keep it real.
Google has taken an interest in photos and how to give more weight to original photography versus stock images. That is reason enough to take a closer look at professional photography for your business. Google is secretive in many of the “how” they make their decisions, rather than waiting to figure it out, take heed and make a change.
While everyone has a smartphone/iPhone and can take good photos – at some point you will need a professional photographer to take your business photos to the next level. This is especially true when your business is a product, or your product is you – as a service provider. We hire professionals when we want the job done right – from plumbers to electricians to photographers. It’s your business; put your best face forward to the public.
Your typical three story industrial distribution warehouse building. Getting the exterior shot was the simplest part of this job, but the client installed a massive air conditioning system and wanted to capture the expanse of this project.
These air conditioning ducts are massive. This ended up being a pretty shot – architecturally speaking.
You can’t get this with your iPhone. Critical to my client were shots of the air ducts – which were 3 stories up, no ladder or lift system to get me close, and these ceilings were 80% dark. The crew was laying in the ceiling panels as I worked staying ahead of them before the window to shoot was gone. I used a 35 mm lens and metered for the darkness to achieve the results above.
This industrial air conditioning system sets on the roof of a massive distribution warehouse, three stories up with many, many units. The only access to the roof was via an access ladder which is straight up the wall, with a platform halfway up and a safety fence encircling the ladder for the final climb. And carrying a camera bag.
A simple white background portrait can be turned into something dramatic and fun with a little editing. It’s all in the eye to showcase your product.
A simple one light portrait using a Paul Buff 86″ PLM, in front of the model about 7′ back, with the photographer standing in front of the PLM, using an Einstein Studio Flash.
Canon 7D 35mm lens
The explosion of Amazon as a marketplace has sent many sellers scrambling to meet the “on white background” standard set for Amazon sellers. It can be frustrating because Amazon defines on-white as in RGB color 255, 255, 255. The slightest off shade results in non-compliance.
There are two ways to achieve this pure white. The best quality is to shoot the product on white and truly have it ON white, properly lit. Like this:
But what if your product is white? If you try to shoot white on white (pure white) without professional setup equipment you’ll end up with little definition to your product. There are techniques used by photographers one of which is using acrylic to give a suspended look to the product and flooding it with light resulting is a rich depth of white – on white. Notice the sheen, the fibers of the nylon straps and the full out line of each product. Like this:
The other method of achieving a pure white background is using Photoshop to extract the product. If you begin with a properly well-lit product and know you will finish the work in Photoshop this can result in getting more shots taken in your session time. It’s a discussion to have with your client. Extraction works for products with defined lines – fuzzy slippers will be more time consuming to extract. As a photographer you need to budget your time, or you will spend more time in Photoshop than if you had properly lit the product to begin with. Bottom line: get a the best image with your camera and you can save time OR do the most in Photoshop.
