Product photography is perhaps one of the most challenging type of photography out there. Clients want perfection. If a product doesn’t look perfect, people aren’t going to buy it. I’m practicing my product photography skills in the lighting, capture, and editing of product photos.
Nu Skin is revamping the product packaging of ALL their products. So two products came across my desk and I had some time to light, photograph and edit the photos. Woo hoo!
The final edit
Cholestin product photograph
Currently, I have about 4-6 lights that I can use for product lighting. For this shoot I started with 2 lights and a reflector and switched to 3 lights and one reflector. Strip lights work great for creating pleasing highlights on the side. I ended up using an umbrella, next time I’ll have to bring in my softbox for even softer lighting. That is a quick lesson learned.
I went through several lighting setups with strip lights, reflectors, and umbrellas
Here you can see the lighting that was used with a back of the camera preview. When it counts, I shoot tethered to a laptop so we can review the images as we create them. This helps identify dust, scratches, lighting patterns, or other things that can be fixed in camera.
We have a plastic case specifically for product photography. It has items such as canned air, dusters, white gloves, glass cleaner, cotton swabs, and other tools to clean the products. This saves so much time in retouching. We may not get all the particles of dust, but it helps. And finger prints are just a dilly of a pickle to remove.
Behind the scene photo with a back of the camera photo
The photos were processed in CaptureOne for the most detail and awesome color. I then finished the editing in Photoshop as any sane person would do.
My light setup for the shampoo photograph
I hoping that someday we’ll have a photo studio at work with all the lights and modifiers I’ll ever need. Woo hoo! In the meantime, I’ll make due using cubicles and portable gear.
Back of the camera view
