(4 year old story - 2008) Recently
one of my friend referred me for a Product shoot with a small start-up
company who are into creating green products. products which are made up
of wood, leaves and natural stuff !!! I have worked with some very
well known products and all the shoots in the past were done by hiring a
particular studio with appropriate lighting equipments, but this time
budget for having their product-catalog was not allowing us to go for
that option ! It was challenging thing for me and honestly I had never
done a product shoot without studio setup ! Results of this shoot are
not great, but in my opinion, they are not bad.. Just have a look and
share your opinion:
So
this shoot started with one Camera and few Lenses but no extra
light/flash !!! Next thing was time and believe me that all these
products need to be shot in one day and we had only 3 hrs on that day..
Can you believe it?
And
we started inside a room which had no natural light as it was not in my
control at all !!! Although client was with me and he offered the
choice if I want to use another room.. But I refused as I didn't want
to disturb other folks in that house !!
Results
from first day were pathetic and I can't even show a sample... Finally I
realized after 2 Hrs that it's not worth spending more time and rather
come again by thinking some different strategy. And of course, it was
not very convenient to ask for another day as this client was busy and
planning to move another city next day!
Finally
we discussed and we agreed for another day. I went there with some
white sheets which are used for photostat and a few high-quality gloss
papers. These glossy papers were also white..
I
created some space on one half of the dining table and created three
walls of these papers with some support of hard things like treys and
pen-stands !!!
When
a little room was ready, I placed glossy papers on all three sides
facing each other and two glossy sheets on the base... These glossy
papers were to give more reflective light when I use Camera Flash !!!
This
whole setup improved the lighting a bit when I started using camera
flash, I was getting harsh shadows on one or other part of product...
Then I took and butter-paper which was luckily available and placed it i
front of Camera Flash which made the shadows a bit lighter but still
there were shadows..
Then
I started reducing spacing between the paper-walls so that subject and
background gets more reflective light to negate the mild shadows.. After
spending some time around this, it worked and I was really happy !!
As
you see, all these products have different shapes and structures, so at
times I felt a need to extra flash to fill in some light to the regions
which are not directly facing camera... On that day I was carrying my
Nokia E63 and new mobile HTC Dezire HD.. Both the mobiles have wonderful
flashlights.. Even in HTC Dezire I had flexibility to adjust the power
of flashlight and all this worked for me !!! I great experience and I am
really happy about this experience...
I
would not say that results are good, but these are fine after looking
at the constraints in terms of infrastructure, Lighting and time !!!
I
have shared all the results with client, but haven't received any
feedback yet !!! After that I also worked on them in Photograph to add
some interesting background or applying some concepts... I am still on
it and would share those results soon !!!
Just
pass on your feedback about these results and share your viewpoint
about such situation... What would you do in case you get into such
situation?
These
are not all the products.. I randomly picked few and shared here to
give a sense about the type of products shot during this assignment !!!
.jpg)