7 Reasons to Consider Hiring a Professional Product Photographer

Rather than trusting your results to a novice or a generalist, professional product photographers bring a unique skill set to your projects. Specifically product professionals employ skills unique to other photographers. General photographers are like a swiss army knife being used for surgery when a scalpel, made for the job, yields a better result with less scaring. Using a novice would be like using a butter knife in the previous example. Might get the job done but with a lot of pain.

Professional product photographer..

1) Provides a predictable professional results.

Borosilicate mug set.

2) Uses professional equipment, lighting and software built for the task.

Simple tabletop studio using professional grade gear.

3) Will stay on task and meet expectations and deadlines.

4) Uses highly skilled post processing techniques to emphasize the good and reducing or eliminating the undesirables.

5) Provides consistency. Polished catalog, on line store or advertising require consistent lighting, color and finishing. Professionals provide a high degree of additional continuity to your product line.

Images consistent across products.

6) Use an artistic eye to bring your products to life. Years of experience bring a solid skill set to your project.

Bonsai soils and supplies banner shot.

7)  Are professional both in the beginning and throughout the entire project and beyond.

These are just a few things to consider. Other things like time, cost, portfolio, fit, and artistic view will be covered in the next post.

Working with Color

 Working with Color to Create Mood

There comes a time in a products life when simple catalog shots on a white sweep are not enough to satisfy marketing needs. In many cases, simple shots on white fail to set the lifestyle or mood that the product is designed to fulfill. In the past few months I have been running trials by adding color gels then RGB lights to the backgrounds still keeping the backgrounds without any texture, just adding color.

Color can set the products tone making something as simple as this Chinese made hip flask seem interesting and exciting. Products will still need to be shot on white for Amazon's primary listing photo, but the additional photos can take full advantage of bright and exciting colors. Ready to learn how color can make you products stand out. Contact me through my website.

Working with models in a lifestyle shoot.

Today I want to talk about a part of product photography that can be the most difficult and most rewarding style of shooting, the "lifestyle" shoot. Personally with a preference to still life artwork, this is the type of project I enjoy most. This gives me the opportunity to really get my creative juices flowing and create product "art" not just a standard catalog shot.
Creating these types of images involves more time and more money as most models and props aren't free. This Hero lifestyle shot of these sauces took almost 8 hours of studio and editing time. Starting with arranging all the props(food items, cooktop, working surface, stove, utensils, and  background) then lighting the stage before the model arrives. Followed by costume and fine tuning the stage for the models addition. Here are 2 shots from the shoot...

and a shot taken the next day using the same stage...

Here is another product lifestyle of some of the components of a gift box. No food stylist was used as the budget for this shoot was quiet modest.

and the included snuggle blanket.

If you would like to discuss having your products photographed in this or any style, contact me for a free bid.

Is it real or is it Memorex...You decide!

Just recently I was asked to duplicate a digital rendering using the actual product. Digital renderings have none of the limitations imposed by the physics of camera optics. Perspective, distortion, color shift and annoying little product defects can all be eliminated with a digital rendering. The resulting image becomes an unreal,representation of the product. The rendering displayed here uses a logo not found on the actual bottle casting.

Sometimes, as in this example of a hand soap dispenser, the consumer may not be as sensitive to the appearance of the product as say a decor object where the actual object will be on display. Manufacturers are quick to produce these "renderings" as they are relatively quick, cheap to produce from product mock-ups and show their products without defect.

Which you as a seller choose to use will depend on your clientele and products. As a note, you will never see Tiffany's use anything but actual photos in their public facing advertising, highly edited, but still the actual product offered.

Would you like more information on product photography? Visit my website at ProdPhoto.com

Building a New Vision/Website

Now that things have slowed down for the summer and before the holiday cycle, I finally have time to fix the website. Last year during the holiday crunch my old web host decided to upgrade the server os which had the net effect of destroying my Wordpress built website. My new host specializes in Wordpress but without the added fee schedule of many of the other hosts. Add-ons like templates and plug-ins are all included at one reasonable fee. Check out the progress at ProdPhoto.com the pages are in flux so things are changing on a daily basis.

On another note, I had a chance to work with some Waterford crystal for an eBay listing. A small job but fun to do. Unlike most product photos, this was a group shot of 12 pieces instead of the usual single hero shot.

Hero shot by the dozen.

I do small runs of product for many auction sites. Do you have a single item that is rare or valuable and want to maximize your selling price? Call or email me so we can discuss your options.

After Holiday Studio Special

Here's a after holiday deal - - Catalog shots on white, set-up fees half off (now $17.50) and $15 per shot (min 5). Book now studio time at this pricing is very limited.

Summer is here...meh?

The new season for #Product #Photography is in full swing and Summer is hitting Florida with what promises to be a real scorcher making outside work almost impossible. Thanks to careful lighting, special props and backgrounds I can bring the outdoors to any small product shoot.

Hero shot of a cold process coffee maker.

Strobes replicate light from open shade giving soft pleasant shadows along with a few specular reflections of the outdoor area. A color print of a garden hedge lit with a separate light and slightly over-exposed completes the outdoor effect.

Here is the same product on the same table but with different lighting and on a white sweep.

On white sweep for Amazon primary listing photo.

Have some small items that need this type of treatment? Contact me for a free bid on your project. www.prodphoto.com/contact/

Courage Cube Loving Uplifting Gifts

I just completed a project for Rebecca Daoud founder of Courage Cube. She has suffered from chronic illness since age 29, read her story on her website at https://goo.gl/y5mDi3 (couragecube.com). Here are some of the product proofs done on white sweep. If you know a person or have a family member suffering from an illness, consider these gifts to support them.

Close ups of some of the included gifts.

Complete gift sets.

Basic catalog photos on white sweep that will be easy to knock out later for use on Amazon or mixed media advertising.

#product #photography #tampabay

Busy Month in Studio and a word about Clipping Masks

November has been a busy month for product photography. With Christmas right around the corner it's been a mixed bag of Amazon work and some specialty work. I have been doing quite a bit with clipping paths for custom ads and other uses.

 Clipping paths "knock out" the background
allowing the graphic artist to use special colors
or  images with the photo.

 Here I inserted a black background.

 Here a white background.

Here the product is left on the original white sweep.

Clipping masks do add a considerable cost to processing as I spend about an hour or two to take each image element away from its backdrop the more complex the image the more time involved.

When should you consider a clipped image? If your image will be printed on different colors like a coffee mug or a shirt; will be used in several different media like a printed ad or banner graphic with other graphic elements applied. I quote each project on an individual basis so fees do vary from image to image. Contact me through my website at www.ProdPhoto.com for more information or to request free quote.

Painted Sea Art from the collection of Jennifer Rogers.

Shooting for color accuracy!

Part of the challenge in product photography which seems less critical in other types of photography is getting the colors spot-on. Using color control software, color balanced lighting, calibrated monitors and camera gear can get you pretty close, but, sometimes you just have to physically match the resulting photos to the product. The following set were a battle because even a slight contrast change threw color accuracy out the window.

Light pastels can cause color control software

to try to boost the contrast to seperate the light tints

from the white elements increasing color saturation 

and color shift.

Here the hardest color to render correctly in JPG is usually full

saturation red.

I always guarantee correct color rendering in a given color space. Sometimes a brief discussion on color theory and monitor calibration with the client is necessary to explain why colors look different on their phone's screen from their desktop computer. More on color calibration here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_calibration

Having trouble deciding weather to out-source or in-house your product photography?

Reading this article will help you decide. http://bit.ly/29U9VlO

I have run into group of marketing articles which convey the importance of quality product photos rather than attempt to rewrite the information I thought I would just re-publish the links here. The message is, without fail, use the best quality photos you can be it DYI or commissioned from a professional.
Enjoy...

The Do's and Don't of Product Photography - http://bit.ly/29PmDog
Hiring a Professional Photographer to Photograph your Products - http://bit.ly/29L3QrH
How to Drive Sales With Effective Product Photography - http://bit.ly/29Y96cr
Why Presentation and Context Are Crucial to E-Commerce Product Photos - http://bit.ly/29OT9Go

Practice, practice, and even more practice

During the off season I like to try different looks to my photography, different lighting techniques, props, equipment and so on. Here are a few latest home brew projects using different techniques. Some of these styles are not commonly used in product work unless the art director is looking to establish a particular look and feel to the product.

 Single strobe firing into several white cards.

 White cards positioned off camera right, left and above

 Small yellow gelled strobe off camera 

right with a white card off camera left

The gel creates a warm almost retro look.

2 lights, strobe with a softbox overhead and

small bare strobe from left and behind.

Silver bounces off camera right and in front.

Photographed in B&W to make the lighting very prominent.

Also experimenting with ambient light and the light created by the subject.

Long exposure and high f-stops let the products own 

light come through without over exposing the stage.

and different light modifiers...

Single strobe with a 2x6 inch snoot focusing hard light 

on the subject and eliminating any spill on the stage.

Well that's it for now until the next break in the schedule when experimentation can begin again.

T-shirts and that hollow look

Clothing can be very challenging and expensive to shoot. Take that empty shirt floating on white look. That's where the garment looks like it is being worn but just floats there in a surreal pose with nothing inside.  Not hard to do with Photoshop and other image editing software. Dress the model in the outfit, photograph in front of a white background. Photograph fill in shots of the back collar and sleeves. Bring it all into Photoshop and 30 minutes later there is a garment floating in the air being worn by the invisible man(woman). I have done this before but the end result always is a bit, well, creepy...My personal preference is to leave the model in or just use a display mannequin designed for in-store use.

Shot to Amazon specs.

The better the photos the better the video!

When we think of a TV commercial we think of video cameras, video and audio, but, many a video commercial contain still photos edited into the script. With the advent of the 4k video camera, resolution is much better than in even the recent past. Digital still cameras, however, still out perform video cameras for dynamic range and detail.
4k (4x 1080p) still is only about 2160px X 1440px or about 3mp compared to a Nikon D90, a 7 year old camera with 12mp of resolution or a newer D610 at 24mp. Even though video can't render such high quality files on TV, the higher quality the starting files the better the result after down sizing.
Here are some shots commissioned by a video house for some up coming TV spots.

Shot on white as the editor want to add color to the backgrounds in post production.

Consider a professional product photographer as another resource in your marketing tool kit.

Those Darned Shinny Surfaces!

From jewelry to water filters(?) Package and product designers love to use clean polished surfaces to give the product an up-scale appeal and it works for the most part. Hey,lets face it, we love the shinny. It's amazing how human vision can cloud the details of what we really see for what we want to perceive. 
In a store we see the chrome cap on that bottle of cologne as a shinny silver embellishment. We seem to ignore the fact that that little piece of silver is mirroring back all the objects in the area. From the sales person to all the fixtures and lighting are reflected in this little mirror. Our eyes see this visual "noise" and our brains filter it out as extra information we don't need. Examine a photograph of that bottle taken in the same place and distance, suddenly we see all the little reflections and imperfections. Our eyes are drawn to them as a moth to a bright light. When we examine a photo our full attention is focused on the item without any other distractions. Our brain shifts gears and we begin to focus on the details of the product. 
As a product photographer it's my job to photograph that shinny without any distracting reflections and still show a shinny surface without the use of software fixes which tend look faked. I have spent years learning and experimenting with the shinny enough to know that each item presents it's own set of problems and solutions. Here is an example of a shinny object that, while not being a mirror, still reflects all that is around it.

A big shinny cylinder!

Keeping some of the unevenness in the reflections helps to define the objects shape and how smooth the surface.

Having trouble with your "shinny"? I can take out the stress of the shinny. Give me a call.  

Amazon Making Product Photography Difficult for DIY

Amazon has some pretty strict rules for the primary product shots making it very difficult for many DIY photographers. The Amazon photography guide is 4 pages long and very strict about how your product shots are composed. In a nutshell, your product must be laid out in a way that is consistent with how the product is worn, applies to jewelry and apparel. Must occupy 75% of the photo, be in complete focus, be at least 1000 pixels on the long side, and be on a pure white background. The are some more rules depending on your items. Additional photos beyond the initial product shot can use models, props, and environmental locations to highlight product features.

Product on pure white.

Of late, about 1/2 my work has been shooting to Amazon specs. Not as much fun as more stylized photography but a necessary part of the business.

Having trouble meeting the requirements? Give me a call and lets discuss your project.

The Holidays Are Here!

Many of our prospective new clients are gearing up for the Holidays and I have been busily doing the salesmen routine explaining our service and what a use license is and why there are set-up fees. As often as I am explaining these aspects of the business I thought I would boil it down to the core concepts here.

First, use licenses.
Licensing can be a very complex and tortuous legal web with image use being highly restrictive as to when, how long, what geographical region use is restricted to (local or international), and even what media the images are used in (print, web, billboard, TV to name a few). This type of license are covered under a broad description of "Rights Managed". ProdPhoto.com uses the simplest licensing scheme of all, "Stock License". The essentials are that you as the client can use the images in any media, in any location, for as long as you want. No recurrent fees or charges.
Next, set-up fees.
Set-up fees vary from job to job but generally cover the cost of dressing the studio for your job. It can include consumables (wear and tear on equipment, mounting wax, strobe bulbs), special order props( pink background paper?) and special equipment rentals(lenses, strobes, mannequins)  typically used only for one project.

Here are some Holiday decorations I just finished that didn't require much in special equipment but took considerable time in set-up. Everything had to be glued down and positioned exactly.

Group shot on a glass sheet.

Everything has been glued in place.

Lifestyle

Maker

It's nice to see that the Tampa Bay area has a strong community of inventors and entrepreneurs. Local inventors produce everything from medical appliances to pet products which brings me to our new client, Smarter Reefs, who make specialized aquarium gear for exotic fish needs. His patented fish feeder is made of clear acrylic polymers making for a challenging set of photos,  pure white background hi-key photos for the up coming web site. Here are the mounting base and feed tubes final shots.

Problem: how to separate the transparent edges from the background

Solution:Use split lighting on the background and subject

The final shot