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Hi Pentaxian friends.
I never did product photography before. I don't have my own studio with a professional lighting system, so that makes it pretty difficult. So not to disappoint anyone, I tried to do some for a client using natural lighting. I set my equipment up in one room in the house that has a great bay window. I laid the product flat, (in this case a new guitar model from Mollenhauer Guitars), and set my tripod up so that I could shoot vertically or almost vertically. I had the guitar propped up about 15 degrees on one side. I draped a black cloth behind me and the camera so that the reflection in the guitar shinny surface would not pick up objects in my room. I shot using a remote so I too would not be reflected in the guitar. The camera being black blended with the black surface behind it.
I was still not satisfied with the results, so I post-processed the image by cutting the surrounding background area. I made a gradient background using PhotoShop and pasted the guitar in. I added a mirror effect at the bottom to emulate the guitar being suspended in mid-air. Then I pasted sections of the guitar in separate boxes bounded by a thin red line to bring the attention to important details. Of course, on the client's website, the details will be blown full size when clicked on.
I would appreciate comments from the photographers that do product photography. I need all the help I can get. I'm not about to spend thousands of dollars just yet. I want to work my way up. I want to start small and add equipment as I go along, to make the work more professional and easier.
Hi Pentaxian friends.
I never did product photography before. I don't have my own studio with a professional lighting system, so that makes it pretty difficult. So not to disappoint anyone, I tried to do some for a client using natural lighting. I set my equipment up in one room in the house that has a great bay window. I laid the product flat, (in this case a new guitar model from Mollenhauer Guitars), and set my tripod up so that I could shoot vertically or almost vertically. I had the guitar propped up about 15 degrees on one side. I draped a black cloth behind me and the camera so that the reflection in the guitar shinny surface would not pick up objects in my room. I shot using a remote so I too would not be reflected in the guitar. The camera being black blended with the black surface behind it.
I was still not satisfied with the results, so I post-processed the image by cutting the surrounding background area. I made a gradient background using PhotoShop and pasted the guitar in. I added a mirror effect at the bottom to emulate the guitar being suspended in mid-air. Then I pasted sections of the guitar in separate boxes bounded by a thin red line to bring the attention to important details. Of course, on the client's website, the details will be blown full size when clicked on.
I would appreciate comments from the photographers that do product photography. I need all the help I can get. I'm not about to spend thousands of dollars just yet. I want to work my way up. I want to start small and add equipment as I go along, to make the work more professional and easier.
Four different results
The one I picked above
03/21/09 - Update: I received some comments and emails, and revised the aspect ratio, positions and some of the details on the guitars above. Hopefully it's better.Thank you for reading and thank you in advance for comments and help.
Yvon Bourque
