More About Product Photography

More About Product Photography

by William Lulow

I used to say that a good photographer could probably photograph anything well. That was because when I started working for other studio photographers before opening my own, I learned how companies that sold fashion products, say, had to shoot the styles “on figure” (that is with models) but also had to have “off figure” shots (products) to use in their ads as well. So, these studios often employed a product photographer in addition to fashion shooters. The thing that both types of photography have in common is LIGHT, the most important element in any type of image making. The difference is that many products are smaller than human figures and thus can be photographed on a table top or even on the studio floor, if necessary. But many products also come in boxes and it is often the box itself with its labels, type and even some signage that needs to be shown for advertising purposes, so the kinds of equipment used for making these images is often different than that used to photograph people. A typical product image might be something like this:

In this image the name on the bag and on anything else in the shot has to be readable and also look good. The background needs to add to the shot to make the product stand out. This was a straight-forward product shot just to show the item and its components. This shot was complicated by the fact that the bottles were all plastic and had to have special lighting to make them readable against a background of a similar tone.

I have often been called upon to make images like this.

This image of a leather case just needed to be shown against a plain, white background, but as I have often said, when you want a background to register as a particular color, it needs to be lit. This product was shot on a light table with one light placed below and the mainlight above.

Here, the image of the bulbs required some specialized lighting techniques to make the elements within clear and readable. This shot also required a special background and knowledge of how to set it up correctly. The lighting was a CROSS LIGHT which produces a black line down the middle of the image. This was especially useful because it was able to capture the filaments of each bulb. The background was a specially made gradient placed on the floor below the clear plexiglass table on which the bulbs were placed. Each bulb was secured by a piece of Tacki-Wax placed behind each bulb’s thread.

Recently, I was asked to photograph some small products again with a white background on location, in the client’s offices. This was my setup:

Here, I had to shoot these products on location at the client’s offices. I was able to use a conference room for my studio and set up a regular table top with a white, no-seam background. Most products are smaller than people and because you want the background to be white, you need to light it from the top. This provides a fairly shadowless light which is needed for most products. Here is what one of the shots looked like:

This shot didn’t need to be “advertising quality” otherwise I might have photographed it on a light table. But the background was mostly shadowless and the product stands out for most demonstration purposes. So, a soft light from the top was sufficient to illuminate the product as well as to keep the background white. Here is another view of the setup:

Here you can see that the softbox I am using is just about the width of the background paper and it is much bigger than the product I had to shoot. That’s what keeps the lighting effect soft. It is the size of the mainlight relative to the size of the subject and how close it is. If I was intending to make an advertising quality shot of this product, I would have to start with a really clean box and shoot it on a light table with a light coming from underneath the product as well as from the top.

This is a product shot for my daughter who was selling these custom mask chains during the Covid-19 pandemic. She needed really clean shots of the necklaces with no shadows. It called for shooting them on a light table with a main light from above. The light table is fashioned from one or two sheets of white, translucent plexiglass. The power of the light coming from below has to be sufficient to fill all the shadows caused by the softbox on top, but not so much as to create a washout. It can often be a delicate balance. You can often get good shots on just a plain white no-seam, but for products like this, the way to get them “shadow-free” is to use a light table. Here is an image made on a light table:

Notice here that there are no shadows whatsoever.  Here is the setup for this image:

Note here that the bottom light was really not aimed up! It produced enough light while aimed sideways to light the white (milk) plexiglass enough to render it white.

These are techniques I learned while working for other studios which had a fair amount of this type of product to shoot. Other effects can be obtained by shooting on a plexiglass surface. Here is yet another example:

This was an image for a catalog that was created on a grid plexiglass background with a reflected spotlight from a light placed behind the subject at an angle that would reflect back to the camera. It was then lit simultaneously from the front with two, vertical softboxes that created beautiful, long highlights on the lipsticks themselves.  The top of the perfume box was made to be suspended in midair by attaching it to part of a coat hanger (strong enough to support it) anchored to the background. A precise camera angle was needed to hide the support from view.

All these techniques for shooting products of various types was learned by working at studios that did this type of photography on a regular basis.

So, yes, if you know your lighting and what makes certain subjects look great, any photographer who possesses this knowledge can probably do a really decent job making these types of images.