and now for something completely different..

decals, and not just your everyday run of the mill standard flat bumper sticker types, these are 3D and look really special. The hard part is to make these look as good in a photo as they do in real-life. The task is to shoot the 4 colors on a neutral white  at several different angles to show off the raised texture unique to this product. The problem is to keep the background uniformly lit. 

Initial shot with minimal post processing. Notice the slight
color variation caused by a slight difference in the color
temperatures of the lights from left to right (cooler lamp
on the right). Something we'll fix in the finals.

The solution was to raise the decals on a glass sheet 6 inches above the background and light the subject and background separately. 2 lights for the product and 3 lights for the background. A mono-light with a 24 inch softbox from camera right to light the product and the right side of the background. A mono-light with a 2 inch snoot off camera left to provide hard shadows showing off the texture and spilling onto the left side of the background. Finally a speed light with a 12 inch softbox to smooth out any shadows on the background. 

The angles shots required a different approach. The background showed an annoying drop shadow from the samples so we placed the product directly on the white background material. This got rid of the drop shadow but required  more post processing in Photoshop.

The small shadow in this series helped bring out the 3D design.