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

Really Cool Stuff from Kenya!

Welcome "Stuff from Kenya" to the ProdPhoto family! Stuff from Kenya imports upscale handcrafts directly from the craftsmen and craft-women. Unique leather goods, belts and handbags all one of a kind and a beautiful addition to any wardrobe. The website is not yet up  but you can visit them on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/StuffFromKenya and buy on-line through eBay.
Just started with the composition and lighting for the belts. Not complete yet but here is a sample.

Shot to Amazon's strict standards.

Close up detail of the deft hand work
securing each bead to the belt.

More on Dixie Belle Paints

Dixie Belle Paint is expanding their offerings almost every quarter as the demand for unique craft colors explodes. This company offers the highest quality artisan chalk paints on the market. This month 5 new colors hi the catalog: Holy Guacamole, Colonel Mustard, Cobalt Blue, Buttercream, and Lucky Lavender. Good thing we document our set and lighting. We can go back to any client shoot and recreate the exact same photos using the new product keeping the continuity between shoots the same. The catalog photos all look as if they were shot in the same session.  As always the client can download both TIFF and JPG files immediately and we always send a DVD with both formats and supporting documents by US mail.

Full set ready for the website and catalog.

Dixie Belle Paint can be purchased on-line at http://www.dixiebellepaint.com

Out of my Wheelhouse

I don't as a rule do any portrait work. But when a friend asks (low or no fee) what are you gonna do... Call Loyce Hood a dear friend who is a pro baby and portrait photographer. Her web blog is here....http://loycehoodphoto.blogspot.com/

Not much to say about the shoot except Loyce is very good at posing people(even difficult subjects who have an incorrect preconceived idea of what a good portrait of them is...). Because of the subject, I chose butterfly lighting with a hard hair light from above camera left and a white bounce board from camera right. This lighting tends to be more forgiving to the subject and skills of the photographer (did I mention I don't do portraits?). The lighting became more of a loop style of lighting because of the hair light. The advantage is the best of both worlds, some shaping of the face and de-emphasizing of the lines.  We worked through several different poses. The client chose the 3 she liked best from the shoot. After choosing the one with the best all around feel my work in Photoshop began. Here is the final presented to the client.

After post