Tag Archives: product photography

Gemstone Jewelry Photography

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Gemstone Necklaces on white Background
Jewelry photography requires a lot of time for trial and adjustment.  Gemstones are often translucent so the lighting is critical to capture the many shades and the way the human eye will perceive it when worn.  Manipulating the backlighting is key coupled with light modifiers to direct the light.

Gemstone Earrings
No flash was used. The difficulty in photographing jewelry is the highly reflective surfaces. With more stones and beveled cuts the number of reflections multiply.  We used one softbox for continuous lighting, scrims to create gradients and foam core for bounce.  Shooting an entire product line with few “like-products” requires a new setup for each piece.

Gemstone Necklace Pendant
Shot using a Canon f2.8 100mm Macro lens and a Canon 5D Mark 3 camera.

Product Photography on White with Multiple Angles

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Some products are just gorgeous due to their exterior surface. This diamond pattern is lovely! The reflective nature is the tough part about photographing this product. Our client is launching a new product line with two sizes of this unit. They also wanted to show the quality of craftsmanship, details and a product styled use image.

Product styling always sounds simple: Grab some items and stack them inside. The last thing you want for your product is distraction from the unit. In this case we discussed  colors of soda, lid options, choice of cans, what to put on the top rack, position of the labels and making sure everything was “balanced” to the eye–and keep these items from moving/rolling. Attention to detail pays off in a well laid out composition and the product “shines”.  In this case–it always shines!

Reflective products (glass, metal, jewelry, high gloss acrylic products) offer challenges. Once the lighting is in place-then you begin to block out reflections you don’t want – inclusive of the photographer in the product. Controlling the light to not blow out the high reflection, yet show off that very shiny surface we all love. The diamond metal pattern here controlled some of the typical hot spots. We were also able to make use of massive overhead natural lighting and several white reflectors to obtain an even product surface look.  Working all of the elements together takes a lot of time. We spend more time setting up a shot, than shooting, typically.  Shooting multiple angles meant repositioning everything (continuous lighting, white reflectors, c-stands, every clothes pin and re-taping) with each change of angle, and the second unit.

When you’re selling online any product photography should include an all-the-parts shot, manuals included.  Let prospective clients know what’s in the box.  We’ve also been asked to edit the photos adding the dimensions for clients.  Make it easy for people to buy your product!

Continuous Lighting
Natural Lighting
White Reflectors
Canon 24-70mm 2.8 Lens
Canon 100mm 2.8 Macro Lens

How Do I Stage My Product?

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Cabin Decor

You have a great product and you’ve got your product on white shots, but you need that one great shot-often referred to as a “hero” shot for your Amazon product page. Even with minimal equipment you can maximize your composition to stage your product.

This rustic cabin decor lamp with painted shade and metal art; and small wood carvings against a tongue and groove wood wall serves as the canvas to creating more dramatic photography.  This is your stage and these are the basic elements to arrange as you look for the shot you’re after.  This isn’t about being quick-it takes time and a lot of shots.  Beyond arranging what you see through the lens you’ll change up the shutter speed and focal length for a wide range of variables to find that end shot.

Cabin Decorating Theme
Turns out less is more.Rustic Cabin Hallway
Adding a floral stem to the very foreground adds shadow and depth. The focus is clearly on the cabin lamp with the floral having the bokeh. This is using a very slow shutter speed and wide open aperture (2.8).

Bokeh
Here the focus is reversed-bringing the floral into focus maintaining the same slow shutter speed and aperture. This might work for a backdrop image for marketing text while you still display your product.

Cabin Rustic Decor
The experimenting continues, same lens settings, but rearranging the floral, playing with the light.  This, too, can be a nice backdrop drawing the eye to the foreground where you might add your marketing message for a website slider.

Rustic Cabin Decor on Tongue and Groove paneling

Then often you come full circle to include parts of several variations of your composition. This used the same settings, pulled in the wood carvings and feathered the floral to a wider angle for a beautifully balanced and bokehed rustic cabin decor photograph.  This gives a lovely staging while highlighting the lamp and giving a vision of how it will look and feeling it creates once brought into the buyer’s home.

Canon Lens EF70-200mm f/2.8L USM
Slow Exposure 0.3 seconds
Rotolight to spot

Amazon Product Photographer

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Amazon Product Size Reference

Product photography on Amazon has required the product’s background to be pure white with a hex number of 255, 255, 255.  This is still standard, but Amazon has broadened product images to include lifestyle photos and staging shots.  These allow the seller to show their product in a setting it will be used (staging image) or a person interacting with the product (lifestyle image).
Camaro Product Staging
Our client needed his very small hidden camera in a staging setting, where from a distance it is unlikely to be easily seen and in multiple settings to show its diversity. In addition to stating the measurements in his product details he wanted a visual reference to show the size of his camera. For this purpose, he chose a silver dollar (top image).
Product Staging with Inset

The product and interior staging shots photos were shot using a Canon 100mm 2.8 macro lens with continuous fluorescent lighting. The exterior auto staged photo was shot with natural light, angling the car for optimum use of sunlight.

Product Photographer in Tucson Arizona

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We shot a full line of industrial lighting products at the manufacturing plant.  From overhead lighting you see in commercial retail stores and manufacturing plants to stylized industrial quality hanging pendant lights and solid metal exterior parking lot lights this was an extensive catalog.  Some of the lighting products measured nearly 9 feet in length.

Shooting against a backdrop we used existing light which was a mix of tungsten and fluorescent light. We used a 5′ x 5′ scrim to soften the overhead skylight.  By trial and error we shot with automatic exposure, viewed each product for accuracy and adjusted as needed to match our eye. Once we began photo editing we had a great reference which gave us a perfect color match.  This was the most efficient way to shoot the products within an 8 hour day.  Crucial to time management in a product shoot like this is having an employee of the client on hand to move product.

Industrial Hanging Pendant Lights

Product Photography in Tucson Arizona

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Product Photography, Outdoor Umbrella

This product photography session was shot outside the manufacturing plant using the brilliant sunlight to work as our soft box. Blocking the light and positioning the full umbrella shot took a great amount of time during which the sun was shifting, but well worth the time. In post we extracted the product for a pure white background product shot. We used Canon’s 24-70mm lens for the top image. The second image (below) was shot with  Canon’s 70-200mm lens for a beautiful capture of the tighter shot. We used two 5′ x 5′ Matthews Silks 1.6 stops. One was used to block the sun and one placed behind the product.  This is an out of the camera image with no photo editing.

Phone Charging Station Product Photography

Product on Black Acrylic

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Product on Black Acrylic Staged

This innovative speaker design offers stunning sound.  The product photography needed to reflect the mood.

The photographer used two Arri 650T fresnel lights with 300 watt bulbs and two Matthews 48″ x 48″ artificial silk scrims, 1.6 stops.  Also used a Rotolight NEO matching the Arri tungsten temperature for the top of the speaker.
Canon 5D MarkIII
Canon 100mm 2.8 macro lens

We used a sheet of black acrylic to create a classic look.  There is nothing in the background, but shooting at a 9.0 aperture kept the product in sharp focus while turning the background completely black. This shot is straight out of the camera, no Photoshop adjustments or editing.

Speaker on Black

Simple Product Staging on Black Acrylic

The designer requested a size perspective so we added wine glasses for a simple staged product image.

Jewelry Lifestyle Photography

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Lifestyle jewelry photos are a great asset to show off your jewelry collection and add “eye candy” to your website.  Showing your jewelry worn breathes warmth and personal connection to your gemstone jewelry – rings, bracelets, earrings and necklaces.  This session was shot at the jeweler’s store within a two hour window.
Lifestyle Jewelry Photography
These lifestyle images were shot using a Paul C Buff Beauty Dish with a 20% grid using an Einstein studio flash, hand held reflector and a Canon 24-70 mm lens.
Gemstone Necklace
We also shot environmental jewelry product pieces in a couple of settings. Creating a stunning bokeh background to set off the sparkling gemstones.
Environmental Jewelry Product Photos
A tight crop (below) brings the ring forward.
Jewelry Product Photography
This diamond ring (below) was set into a succulent. We manipulated the image with photo editing to keep the focus on the ring. These product images were shot using a Rotolight and a 100mm 2.8 Canon lens.

Environmental Product Photography

Flat Lay Product Photographer in Orange County

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Flat Lay Product

For flat lay product photography an overhead camera rigging system with an HD monitor gives the Macro lens the flat, level shooting plane for tack sharp focus.  We lit using 2 soft boxes and a quarter stop 48 inch scrim with a 3rd flash behind.

Sequined Bikini Product Photorgapher

The sequins took a bit of light modifying, to maintain the jewel tones without blowing them out. We used foam core to create a box to channel the light.

Swimsuit Photographer

Flat lay product photography requires one essential tool for setup: pins.  Lots of pins, lots of foam-core layers and additional time.  Spandex can be a bit of a wrestle due to the elasticity, but pinning does the trick.

Cosmetic Product Photography

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Cosmetic Product Photography

What began as 35 cosmetic products turned into a full line of 360 products for a full e-commerce website.  Using continuous lighting many shots needed stack focusing to provide crystal clear focus from front to back.  We used a Canon 100mm 2.8 macro L lens no more than 1 foot from the product and set the aperture at f8.

To create the shine on the brushes, lipsticks and other reflective products we used a variety of light modifiers (scrims) to create each gradient.

Color matching is always critical for e-commerce and requires special 2 fold attention – lighting the color consistently, then visually matching the product to the screen in post.  Though all monitors use RGB, not all monitors will display color the same. Things like graphics card, monitor drivers affect the actual display of color on every device. Despite knowing this shooting the products under strict lighting and visually color matching they will be consistent and you’ll minimize product return headaches when color is part of the buying decision.

Cosmetic Photography

See more product photography.

Cosmetic Line Photography