Photographers are by design, professionally symbiotic creatures; the best example of this symbiosis is in product photography; between designers and photographers. Commercial product photographers create their content based on how another creative evolved their design, the medium may be light but the canvas is often capturing the art made by someone else.
Now I’m not trying to diminish photography by any means! Capturing that beauty requires years of work and training like any other profession to master, and a skilled photographer can make a cheap brand look like a million bucks much like a bad one can completely kill one.
In this behind the scene studio blog, I want to showcase the evolution of my creative process based on the choices made by the product designers, and how we both benefit by having our work look its best. All this hopefully translates to more products being sold, and more work coming in.
In practice when I’m planning a shoot like this, the most important information I need to understand the product, why was it made, who is the target market, what solution is it providing for its user, and so on.
Most of the time this is done face to face, where I work directly with the brand to plan the creative direction and storyboard the images. To keep it simple, for this exercise we are just going to assume there was no input from the client, and I must make creative choices based on what I see.
So what creative choices were made here? It’s easy to think the designers just took a little bottle, slapped a sticker on it, put their product inside, called it a day and took it to market.
I can promise you that was not the case, someone slaved over sourcing the perfectly shaped bottles that had the right frosted finish, finding just the right kind of paper with the subtle handmade quality. Going through hundreds of pantone swatches looking for that, just right red, that will pop off the warm tones of the paper. All these creative choices come together to tell a story of a product that feels small batch, natural, and carefully manufactured with consumer well being in mind.
Then the product is sent to me, and it is my job as the product photographer to take the viewer even deeper into that story. To try and guide them into the narrative that the designers have built around the product and convey it via social media, e-shop listing or even print media (I know, what’s that?)
I started by brainstorming how I was going to light the scene. Light will be the first thing to set the mood in a photo. I wanted everything brightly lit, with subtle shadows but I also wanted there to be a single light source and feel almost window lit.
This is where I would get the chance to further expand on that natural, earthly element of the product that the designers produced. Introducing a feel of natural sunlight, like something we would see in nature.
I achieved this by using a large light source that I diffused heavily, so it felt like early morning sunlight through the window. I drove home that feeling of warmth by adjusting the color of the light to be yellowish over the more artificial blue light I might have used on electronics or athletic products.
Next was the set/ background, I didn’t want to include too many or any props for these photos. The product is small and most plants, fruit, sticks or other natural materials would dwarf the bottles. Also, as a result of the bottles being smaller, I knew I would need to zoom in more showing greater detail and taking most of the surrounding area out of the focal range. This was a benefit because close ups help connect the viewer to the product, also highlighting some of the design details in the logo, and graphic design.
Plain paper background wasn’t going to cut it as a backdrop, it’s boring and doesn’t add to the image just creating large areas of negative space that will draw the eye away from the product.
I found the happy medium in a roll of hemp heavy textured canvas for nautical use. The fabric has a nice ivory tone that plays well off the paper on the label. The heavy weaving also produced a nice texture that made for an interesting background that wasn’t distracting or pulling attention away from the product. The fabric folding over itself created areas of shadow that gave the set a sense of depth, foreground and background, grounding everything in the scene.
After lights, and the set had been established, the last element is composition.
Composition is where I feel the photographer really gets to tell their side of the story, to put the client/viewer into our shoes to see something how we see it. So far we had a set and lighting that conveyed a sense of nature and warmth, it didn’t feel like a big brand with products on a set with artificial lights.
The element I wanted to add was a sense of power to the little bottles. A feeling that this small product would be so much bigger because it packs so much in something so small. I did this by elevating the product so it is always at eye level with the viewer, never looking down on it like we would in real life. I kept the items close together ensuring they filled most of the frame and shot at multiple focal depths to ensure the entire bottle was in focus.
Overall I was happy with the results, it feels on brand, strands out on social media feeds and has a wonderful narrative of the brand.
I hope you enjoyed a little behind the scenes, and feel free to reach out with any questions about photo, video or any other type of creative services!
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