Just A Little Product Shot
by William Lulow
Here’s a seemingly simple little product shot that turned out to be a bit more complicated than it appeared. The client wanted a shot of this breast pump machine shot on a plain, white background to match other shots on the company’s website. There were plenty of intricacies about the product which didn’t lend itself to silhouetting in Photoshop easily. Therefore, it had to be lit correctly so that the product would show against the white background and the background itself, had to match the other shots already on the website.
Now you probably could have shot this on any background, selected the entire product in Photoshop and then placed it on a white background. But with the intricacies of the plastic bottles, the small hose and the overall setup of the shot, it would have taken quite a while to perfect in post-production. Why not shoot it correctly in the camera instead?
Believe it or not, this image was lit with three lights. One that lit the vertical part of the background and the top of the product, a second that lit the front of the product and carried the tone of the white background, a third that lit the right side of the product and carried the white tone to the lower right of the image.
When you think of rendering the background tone separately from the subject, the lighting setup will usually fall into place. It’s when you try to do too much with one light that you run into trouble. This lighting setup was achieved by a step-by-step approach, as I do in all my lightings.
With all the care taken to render all the tones, I still needed to bring the exposure on the transparent bottles down by creating a separate layer in Photoshop, selecting the bottles with the magnetic lasso tool and then adjusting the contrast. But that’s all I really needed to do.
Some clients say, “Just put it on a white background,” no matter what the subject is. That’s great for products that have a sharp definition line and are darker than the background itself. But what about those colors that are similar or close to the white background tone? That’s when special lighting techniques must be used and the photographer has to have the knowledge of how to use them. Some photographers will use a light table with a light placed beneath it to achieve a pure white background. But that technique wouldn’t work with a product like this because much of it is actually translucent. Here is an example of one of my small light tables set up in the studio for small objects:
This is a small table frame on which I put a piece of white Plexiglas. I can vary the intensity of the light from underneath by the distance. The top light is a softbox placed on a boom.
Here is a sample image from this setup (no retouching):
So, if you have a small product that requires a pure white background, this might be the way to go. However, when you have products that present particular lighting problems, they often require different and perhaps a bit more complicated solutions. Every product has different characteristics that must be taken into account BEFORE you begin the shoot. Again, that’s the time to use your knowledge of shapes, sizes, angles, reflections as well as photographic technique and THINK about what you want to show first.
