Product Photography

• Context & Research

  • Outcomes

  Create a Logo: -

For this project we have been asked to produce product photography for a fictious company called “Good Vibes”. The brief has asked me to create a logo for it and include it on a billboard campaign for the fictious company. As I have created three logos, I have created a Google Forms voting page to see which one the people thing I should use. This will go into my Primary Research Section.

• Subject Research

  • Primary Research: -

I made a survey on Google Forms to see what my class mates thought of the logos and which one they would like me to use, as of now I have received 3 responses with 66.7% chosen option 3 out of the 33.3% who chose option 1. For me this was a good way to see what the people think of the logo and it gives me a good idea of what I should be using for this next project.

• Secondary Research: -
  Product Photography is a very small type of commercial photography which is used for selling products online. The aim is to clearly show the product for the people online shopping to have a better experience of viewing and to see what it would look like in real life.

  Usually most product photographers have to be really technical compared to other types of photographers, because the shots are taken in a studio environment with specific studio lighting. These type of photographers can get really creative with all types of props and models especially with either natural or artificial lighting.

Most product photography features show the brand and other visual featureswhich would make the shopper look at the item and buy it. The type of images that would be taken are a key factor to selling things online for the viewer.

Their are many different types of Product Photography which are usually related to different business uses, some vary in different styles.

• E-Commerce Product Photography: -

  As I have talked about the E-Commerce and how it works in my own blog, I will put a link into my previous article below to refresh your memory if you don’t know what it is.
  E-Commerce Multi-Media Campaign — Owen Phillips Media & Photography

  This type of Product Photography is centred around selling online and most have different styles for their shop, different shops usually have different requirements for their photography whether it is white background or a black background. These shots can easily be done by picking the colour for the background which is plain and the goal is to represent the product to the customer as if they are going to receive it. Most often white backgrounds are used as it is a very simple and bland colour. Most sites like Amazon or eBay use this type of medium.

• Creative Product Photography: -
  This type of product photography goes way past the plain and simple white background used and incorporates a artistic element with a background, props and even a bit of false greenery in a form of a plant etc. This type of medium is usually used for content branding, advertising and even used digitally. Most of them are used on product pages as it represents that type of product. These type of images even work well on social media platforms and throughout your online shop.

• Print Product Photography: -
  This type of product photography is mainly used to create a tangible marketing or advertising material, usually requires plenty of pixels to create, the image used will probably resized for many type of print product photography. It is so you can capture enough visual information to avoid any type of distortion in the printed photographs.

• Lifestyle Product Photography: -

  Putting the product into a contextual environment helps the shoppers imagine themselves with the product in the lives and this could potentially appeal to the customer instead of trying to focus on the features of the product. In traditional terms this is usually expensive and can include models, different locations and even assistants to help you. Another one also requires Adobe Photoshop and turn it into a stock photo which is your contextual environment, all this is called lifestyle compositions.

• Food Product Photography: -
  This type of product photography mainly shows food and beverage which are available to purchase, photographers who work on this type of medium work closely with a food stylist to prep the plater and make it look good to be photographed. Some images may even feature the preparation stage. They also use complex lighting techniques and complex backgrounds.

• 360 Degree Spin Photography: -

  This is a very special type of product photography where you take a series of images and combine them together to create a GIF type of image. These type of images can give the buyer a complete look from every angle of the product. Most people usually add a few lines of code or more to make the photographs animated.

• Now I am going to be moving onto the different types of lighting techniques people use when they create product photography.
  
  ”Hard light photography” is used a lot as it gives off a sharp edge shadow of the side of the item, these type of shots are usually best shot from above the item as this gives off plenty of texture enhancements and creates more contrast in the photograph.

• Another type of Hard light is called “Specular” which retains it’s qualities of reflectiveness. When the light shines onto the subject, it bounces off the subject into the camera. The bright spot which is the highlight of the technique appears on shiny objects when illuminated. It is very important in modern day computer graphics as they provide a strong visual cue for object shape and location.

• Linking into “Specular”, “Diffused” is another type of lighting which has all of it’s reflective qualities removed, as the light hits the object, the light does not reflect any form of light back into the camera.

• “Flat white photography” is softer light which is shot on non-reflective white material, it is usually white paper. A contact shadow happens when the light meets the subject, but then a softer light goes past that. All this helps give the product place. For example glasses are usually require attention as it is a see through object at one end.

• “Natural light” is a technique where a window of light creates soft light coming in from one direction. This creates a long soft shadow which could be left dark or changed to be lighter. A comforting casual look uses natural light with a grey background and with messy reflections of the subject which are natural.

• Practical Skills

  Production Considerations: -

For this assignment, the ideas I want to do for my project is do some water splash photography featuring a good looking can with a funky design on it and crop it to only the can and the splash which makes the image look good as you have captured the water and the can. I will be using the laser which makes the lights flash as something is dropped passed it. I think this is a good basis to start off with as it is creative.

For my next set of images if this doesn’t pan out as how I want it, I will do a simple product shoot using “Hard lighting” their is no shadows from the image whatsoever and it is a dead sharp and crisp image. For this I will need a white background with something white to sit the product on top of, some sort of levitated platform (a table or stool), a tripod and a camera.

Production: -

For the water splash images using the Monster cans, we used a laser which made the lights flash when we dropped the object into the fish tank full of water. I took about 21 shots and out of 4 of them were usable for this project.

For the last two images, I will not edit them, as I think they don’t need any altering. I created a DIY setup to shoot this, I used two pieces of clean white paper, a lighting source which was a light, a tripod and Canon EOS 100d. I shot landscape as you can see. Behind the scenes for this shoot is below.

• Post-Production

Edited Images: -

For most of the images, I have cropped them and not altered any of the exposure or contrast levels, but with this Punchline Punch Monster Energy Can I altered the Exposure as the red/pink looked too dark for my liking and effectively it brightened the image up. The software used is Adobe Lightroom.

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As you can see with these two images above, I have cropped the image using the square crop to only catch the action in the images, like the water splash and the can itself. There was no alterations the levels to these images whatsoever. The software used is Adobe Lightroom.

Advertising Posters & Billboard Designing: -

I used a site called Canva which is a graphic design website to create these advertising posters. The way I designed this is fairly simple, The type of text I used is Saria Condensed. I used the bold version for the title of the poster and the standard one for the bottom text. I changed the colour and text for the titles depending on which flavour or image it is.

• Billboard Designs from Graphic Burger: -

I used a site called Graphic Burger to find templates for the billboard advertising screens. The site allows you to download a set of photoshop files and all you do is drag in your image into the program and it places it into the selected slot on the layer. In this case we are dragging out newly created advertising poster created from Canva into Photoshop. I used my two favourite image from the shoot to create these Billboard Designs.

• Presentation

  Final Selected Product Photography Images: -

Final Billboard Design: -

• Evaluation & Reflection

• What are your three strengths & three weaknesses of your Product Photography?

  My first strength for this project is the planning was well thought out and it was clearly talked about in my blog, and I knew exactly what I was going to do, secondly, I think my final products are strong especially the water splash images as it shows the splash from the water and a clear view of the actual Monster cans. Lastly which makes my images look good was the use of the advertising posters and of course putting them into the bus stop billboards as well which makes it realistic.

  My first weakness is some of the water splash images that I had taken were either miss timed or looked good from the splash but couldn’t see the artwork of the can. I have placed some of these examples below.

Secondly, I should of photographed more images of the hard light product photography as from looking at my two brilliant examples, I feel as I could of used different products then just the two I have used and this leads me onto the time management problems I had because if I had more time to shoot and experiment, I think I could of come out with a better selection of images and more in detail images using the logo I created for the fictious company “Good Vibes” .

• What do you now understand about the characteristics and contexts of Product Photography?

  I learnt mostly about all the different types of lighting that is involved in creating product photography, such as Hard Light, Soft Light, Flat white and even Specular light which is another type of Hard light. I also learned about how there is many different types of product photography for the different industries that it is used in, E-Commerce is a huge medium as it requires you to sell it online and it requires product photography to be involved. 360 Degree product photography is probably the most interesting one as you take a series of images from different angles and then you put it together to make a moving image of the product.

• What were your key areas of development during this assignment work, Give Explanations

  I think experimenting was a huge factor through out this assignment as at the beginning I didn’t know how I was going to shoot my ideas. After researching into every bit of lighting techniques and of course I asked my lectures for support with setting up the lighting rigs etc. I also learned more about different camera settings which need to be set up for the water splash.

• Authentication Document