More Product Shots

More Product Shots

by William Lulow

I am mainly a portrait photographer, but am also very experienced at shooting products as well. I spent quite a while working for a studio in New York City that photographed many products for catalogs produced by Macy’s, Famous Barr (St. Louis), Bloomingdales as well as several other, smaller companies. Making really good images of products is a completely different task than making a portrait. First, objects do not usually move. They have a habit of staying where you place them, unless you are trying to photograph something in motion, of course. This enables the photographer to concentrate fully on the lighting as well as the placement of the product in front of the camera. And, he or she would normally have time to tweak the setup, lighting, position as well as props, as necessary to arrive at just the right image. The other thing I must note is that when I decided to do photography as a career, almost all my beginning images were still lifes. It seemed far easier to just get some kind of inanimate object that wouldn’t move and just play around with light and shadow.

There are a number of things to consider, however, before you begin photographing an object. Some of those are:

1. Shape of the object
2. How much of the object actually needs to be seen
3. Size of the object
4. Qualities of the object itself (reflectiveness, surfaces, writing or labels, its cleanliness, other material qualities, etc.)
5. Purpose of the photograph (to sell the object, to show it in exquisite detail, to make an abstract image, etc.)
6. Special lighting considerations such as: how are other, similar objects being shown in the same publication
7. Kind of background to be used in the shot (studio, location, special props, etc.)
8. Are any people needed to show the object?

Each, any or all of the above will determine how you photograph the object you are considering.

Here are some items you will need for your studio if you are thinking about doing product work:

1. A tabletop
2. Background paper or other background material
3. Light banks or photo soft boxes
4. White Plexiglas sheets
5. Clay or Tacki-Wax (to keep small objects in position)
6. Props (as needed)
7. Dust-off cannisters
8. Soup cans (or other heavy objects used to prop up products, when necessary)
9. Artist’s razor blades
10. Gaffer tape
11. Masking tape
12. Several 16×20″ or 20×24″ white/black cards for reflectors
13. Macro lenses designed for doing close-ups

Let’s take a few of these things one-by-one. Most products are photographed on a table top of some kind. It might even be a kitchen counter, if you plan to photograph food or food-related objects. You will most likely, need a background material, either white no-seam paper or some other material. Products are usually boxes, bottles or cups that all have some reflective qualities to them. That’s where softboxes or light banks come in. It’s better to have a rectangular highlight on a shiny object than a round one which would be produced by a photographic umbrella. So, I usually do not use umbrellas except to provide some overall extra light in the room itself. I use white Plexiglas sheets  if the subject needs to be lit from behind or underneath.

These were chains to hold masks during Covid. This was the setup for the shot:

Since this image was made several years ago, I have updated my lighting setups with monolights. My current setup for small objects is shown below:

It’s the same basic idea, just streamlined quite a bit. In order to create a complete, white background with small objects, it is probably best to use a light table. It consists of a piece of plexiglas supported by a frame of some kind and lit from beneath. This one was ready-made but fairly inexpensive. It works for small objects only. For larger products, I used to use a 4×8 foot white plexiglas supported by saw horses and I placed a softbox underneath it to keep the light dispersed enough. You obviously also need lights on the subject itself, but the light table creates the perfect, white, shadowless background that makes the product stand out.

This was a shot produced with a clear piece of plexiglass on which the bulbs were put and held in place by small bits of tacki-wax. The gradient background was then placed below and the bulbs lit with a cross light comprised of two softboxes. This created the dark space in between the bulbs to show the filaments.

So, a good knowledge of light and studio lighting setups is needed to produce really stunning product shots or still lifes. You need to know what the product looks like and decide what needs to be shown. Here’s an example of a fairly simple product that needed to be shot on a white background, but light colored bottles needed to be readily seen as well:

This called for some feathering of the light on the left side a bit using a black card or flag, to cut the light down just a bit. So, everything shows enough detail to be used in a catalog or sell sheet.

There are specialized techniques for shooting food as well. But again, it depends on how the images will be used. Photographs for boxes or for advertisements that will be used in large size, often take stylists to set up. They are different from catalog shots which normally don’t call for extensive styling. This shot was actually made with my iPhone in available light. But my knowledge of where to position the camera to take advantage of the best light really came in handy: