In my very first ever blog post, I’d like to talk about photographing things from the comfort of your home. These days people may need work photographed and with Social Distancing in place (we’re still in 2020 at the time of this post), we need to still be able to create and keep our clients happy!
There are just a few steps to getting quality work out there without a massive expensive studio budget. Remember a few things to get you started: Props, light, and creativity. With those three things, you can do a lot with very little!
For this first shot, you can see the skin care brand has the word ‘banana’ right on the bottle. Immediately you should be thinking of ingredients, or elements that the brand or the company may have in their product line. If it’s for a specific beauty brand like these are, you should look at the things that the product is made of and if you can, include those in the photos.
The second important piece is light. Yes, that thing that’s always in the back of our minds but actually may be the second most important piece in a photo besides the machine you use to actually capture the image! Without light we don’t have a photo. So make sure you have a lot of it. Then you can always dial your equipment back to adjust for the brightness that you’re working with. For this example, I’ve pulled out a bit so that you can see the product is just laying on a table in my backyard. But the light is harsh as the client wanted nice hard contrasting shadows. I stepped into the sunlight, arranged the bottles and photographed the product to be edited and sent to the client.
The last thing in this that I want to cover, and certainly not the least when it comes to order or importance but being just a little creative in the placement, the color and how your product relates to its surroundings are all really important factors in creating good product photography. Please don’t be afraid to try new things! For this shot as you see, there’s a book with corresponding blue and white, matching the product bottle. Then adding a simple plant, flower, a few blades of grass goes a really long way! At the end of this shoot the client was pleased, the images came out very classic and simple yet elegant and elevated. Experiment with things that may work together and above all else have fun while shooting! It will make the project better when you’re feeling good about what is actually being photographed. Enjoy!
