The Process

Concept Development

Whether you are selling a jar of mayonnaise or a luxury car, the process of achieving gorgeous high end product photography is essentially the same. We follow a very clear process when shooting just about any product and it all begins with concept development. While this may seem obvious, it is a critical step in insuring a concise and precise message is delivered through the medium of photography to your curious audience. 

In the beginning, it is crucial to metaphorically deconstruct the item being photographed. We typically start by describing the very essence of what it is we are shooting. Are there emotions, energies or experiences that this product evokes? Everything we as consumers come into contact with carries with it a wide array of defining characteristics; texture, functionality, intrigue, ergonomics, etc. There is an infinite amount of descriptors and sensations any given product can elicit. When we extrapolate the specifics of these traits of the product, we can prioritize the factors that truly define the product we are going to be shooting. Is it a product meant for fitness? Perhaps the words that rise to the top are “vitality”, “health” and “well-being”. Is it a specialty batch of beer your brewery is releasing? Maybe the words you come up with are “summer”, “friends”, and “floral notes”. Through isolating the key traits of your product, you can find associations with the defining words and create important associations between these words. In our beer example, this could create a central focal point of a fishing trip. The can sitting in the foreground as a group of friends are lounging on a lake shore could be a fairly simple starting point to build a strong photograph with deep associations to a rich experience.

Not every product photo needs an experiential tie to it. Sometimes a setting is what defines your product. What if you are selling a lamp? Your core words may be “luxury”, “beautiful”, and “elegant”. Sure you could photograph a happy customer reading under their new high end lamp, but these words don’t exactly represent the essence of the lamp. Considering a lamp is an item with a very specific purpose, and your lamp is a wonderful accent to a home, it will be best to demonstrate how this piece vitalizes a space. An impactful photograph would then be something like showing the piece contextually within a beautifully furnished room. A lamp doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It joins other pieces of furniture as an element of the room. So we would find a shooting location, such as a high end, well furnished home. Through composition and arrangement, we can powerfully show how the lamp helps tie all of the other elements of the room together. The photo will set as a strong indication that your lamp is defining characteristic of this room and creates the idea that this lamp is critical for the room. 

Once the core words have surfaced to the top, we can begin the next stage of concept development and that is establishing specific elements of intrigue to the photography. This can be done through props, photography techniques, locations or a wide variety of other things. One of my favorite things to do is toy around with photo techniques to create a high energy still image. An image that freezes a high energy and exciting moment. The idea is to hold the viewer’s attention for as long as possible. One of my most popular images is a shot of cup of raspberry yoghurt we captured in the studio. We could have simply shot the cup on a nice cool background. It would have been simple yet completely forgettable. What we elected to do was get fresh raspberries from the grocery store and put them in a cup of water and toss the contents on top of our yoghurt cup. Using high speed flashes that can blast the scene with a very brief (1/1000 of a second) burst of intense light and suspend the fruit and water in the air. When you look at the photo, you take in a visual explosion that translates to a sensation of bursting fruit flavor on your taste buds.  

In another example, we were shooting for the lubricant company WD-40. To create the rugged and utilitarian end user experience, we set the photo in an auto mechanic shop. Our focus was closely framed on the can in a mechanic’s hand. Since WD-40 prides themselves on their various spray nozzles (each can has a specific spray pattern and thus has a unique and specific utility) we wanted to focus on the expelled lubricant, the company’s pride and deeply researched element. Through high speed photography and concise and planned  backlighting (placing the light behind a given subject to create a projecting it towards the camera to illuminate the subject and separate it from a background) we were able to see every single particle of WD-40 coming out of the can in it’s trademark conical shape. It is essential that a photographer and client are on the same page when it comes to understanding the product and its intrinsic qualities. 

Production

For brevity’s sake, I will glance over some specific and crucial parts of the pre production process. These include location management, call sheets for the crew, craft services, casting if necessary and other aspects of the nitty gritty. This article is defining the abstract. Perhaps I will dive deep into the specifics of pre production for another article. 

After all of the concept elements have been defined and it’s clear that a sense of cohesion exists in the minds of the client and the photographer, we can move on to assembling the elements of physically creating photos of the product. Through lighting, composition and artistry, we can begin placing the photographs into a scene. My first step is to establish the frame. I usually lock the camera on a tripod and begin with the basic elements, such as the background and where the product will exist in the frame. Before we even begin lighting, it’s important to understand the composition of the shot. Composition is one of the most important principles that hold a viewer's gaze. Our eyes are pushed and pulled through an image instinctively. There are many basic rules of composition that are a great place to begin. The idea is that a well balanced composition will take your eyes on a guided path through the shot. Your eyes trace lines and patterns throughout the shot and a visually satisfying composition invites the viewer to keep finding paths that can take you back the subject. Each element of the photo carries its own visual weight. There is density of elements and these need to be arranged accordingly. This is why you often times see a subject off center. The visual weight of the subject takes up, for instance, the left one third of the frame and is visually balanced by, perhaps, a slightly out of focus background making up the right two thirds of the frame. This implicitly causes you to absorb the subject and then begin deciphering the location in which is shot. Composition is just the first step in guiding your eyes through weighted elements.

The next step, however, is far more complicated and requires a technical approach to master and that is lighting. Light is at the core of all photography and an expert photographer has learned to harness, shape and guide the light to enhance a composition in an impactful and critical way. Lighting illuminates every single nuance of a photograph. For instance, we were shooting a bottle of liquor that had bold curves and an elegant design. It was based off an old style “rocker” oil bottle and, thus was deeply a deeply essential part of the distillery’s marketing plan. We needed to define each of the curves of the bottle while not dimenshing the strength of the composition. We assigned a specific light for each curve to create a well defined glowing edge. We then began lighting the background; their gorgeous cocktail lounge and bar top. In order to keep the focus on the bottle, we shot a lower quantity of light on the wall behind the bar. The composition stayed the same but through lighting, we were able to push the bottle to the front but didn’t force it to remain floating in the dead space if we hadn’t splashed some light on the background. 

Lighting, however, can work against you if you aren’t careful. In the example of the bottle, we had to be on the lookout for rogue highlights that detract from the product. We ran into a lot of problems but for each problem there needs to be a planned solution. The unwanted highlights that were showing up in the bottle were from the sun shining through the window. Our solution, which was clear from the second we went to the location to scout it, was to cover the windows in duvetyne, a thick black fabric that blocked any natural light from spilling into the scene. The location had massive windows, so we dedicated a full hour of our set up time to rigging the fabric to every problem window. Another thing we do to insure the best quality of light is falling on our subject is to diffuse the light through the use of softboxes. These are large accessories that attach to the head of the light and spreads the light out, making it so our small light head becomes a very large soft light sources that softens shadows and make the light that falls on the scene soft and inviting. It’s critical while in the field to do everything you possibly can to be on the lookout for unpleasant lighting. 

I could talk forever about the elements of the production day, but again, with the abstract as my focus on this article, I will move on to the final stage of the process. In this final stage, both objectivity and subjectivity will be discussed.

Post Production

After we have said our goodbyes, torn down the set and put everything back to its original place (it’s absolutely important to leave a place better than you found it, though not everyone follows these morals) and we have dropped the files onto the computer, it’s time to cull a collection of photographs and weed out the obvious rejects. On some shoots, we will then share the selections with the client and have them select which ones we are going to dig into with a fine tooth comb. Often times, a client will have an attachment to a photo that may not be the best in a technical sense, but is right for them for one reason or another. 

Once the selection process has been knocked out, we will then look at the photos and begin correcting the objective flaws. These often include any blemishes on the product, any issues such as sensor dust that are a constant nuisance to any photographer and any highlights that were unavoidable on the product. This process eliminates the unmistakable distractions for the viewer and keeps the focus on the product. It doesn’t take the most skilled individual to recognize what sticks out like a sore thumb. By using software such as Adobe Photoshop, we can, if shot properly, remove the offending issues. It should also be noted, as a precaution, that it is essential for the client to source the most blemish free product for us to work on. We can fix a lot of things, such as small scratches and dings, but major flaws such as printing issues, stickers that aren’t well applied or factory batch numbers getting placed on top of the logo are nearly impossible to fix convincingly. It can’t be stressed enough that providing the least flawed product will result in a far better end result. 

Now that we have cleaned up the flaws in the photo, we can move on to color correcting the image. Second to lighting, color correction is a process we use to evoke the mood of the photograph. Through color correcting, the most subjective element in post production, we will push areas to be brighter and diminish other areas to shift focus. If lit correctly, this is done to enhance the shot. An unseasoned photographer will likely be using this process to correct issues in their shots, for instance if the photo is way too dark, they will push the exposure up later, thus inducing a lot of noise into the image, affecting the quality of the output. Other things that are addressed in color correction is the tone of the image. We have the power to shift, add and saturate colors. Some products will be most impactful with a slightly desaturated color palette, while others will need to boost the vibrance to add some powerful pop. We can add a gritty texture that adds a sense of ruggedness, or downplay the grittiness to make the product more elegant. It all depends on the style of the shoot and ties back to the concept development phases in that it can affect the defining elements of the product. Due to the subjectivity of this area, the artist’s portfolio will tell you if they have inclinations towards a certain mood. 

Product photography can be approached in a multitude of ways, however, a successful photograph will be well conceived, well lit and composed, realistically flawless and expertly colored. No matter what it is you are trying to shoot, it is essential to follow the process with your photographer in order to create the best possible depiction of what it is you are selling. The art of photography is a powerful tool to say everything you want to say about your product in a single frame. Afterall, a picture tells a thousand words as they say.