30 July 2012

Product Photography

I signed up with Studio Space on their Basic Studio Lighting and Product Photography with Flash workshops last month. I've always wanted to try out studio photography but haven't found the time and money to go for that because of my busy schedule... So I finally found the time and also an affordable workshop.

The morning session at Studio Space was about basic studio lighting. We were introduced to strobes, stands and lighting modifiers. It has been an eye opener for me as it is totally different with in-camera settings, for example the power of the strobe, how to use the light meter and set the correct exposure etc... It certainly has been an enriching workshop!

One thing we learnt during the workshop is High Key, Mid Key and Low Key portrait. It means the background is generally blown out to give a more stylistic look. Example below. Do note all images are out-of-camera with no PP.
Note that the background is totally blown out!

We also learnt how to do a Mid Key lighting and modify the background lighting a little to give a more dimensional look. Below is an image with a flash+honey comb to give the subject a halo-type of background.

Sorry about the half eyes!

The Low Key gives a more mysterious feel to the image. This is achieved by a higher ratio of front lighting compared to the background.

Me trying to be funny...

My other half...

The Product Photography workshop is conducted in the afternoon, showing us how light can be easily modified to achieve different mood. Shall not go too much into details as there are quite a lot of information. Nonetheless, I managed to learn quite a lot that will aid me in my future work with product photography.

Simple violin

Didn't know this can be easily done by a simple flash

Looks life-size but it was only a miniature replica... Hehehe...

This is one of my favourites! Simple and pretty easy to set up!

This setup is more elaborate. Need a Globo behind a screen, a flash with snoob on the left and a reflector on the right.

It is certainly fun to do all these shots that I can only dream of doing in the past! Now that I have some knowledge of how it's been done, it is now time for me to put what I have learnt into good use! I'm not saying I'm up there as a professional now. Just that at least I have a head start of  how these images are shot, I can play around the lighting and background to achieve different effects. Will practise more and update in the future! If you have some products you want to shoot, feel free to contact me! I'm not charging at the moment but am building up my portfolio!

*All images are shot with Nikon D90 with 50mm F1.4 lens at ISO 200, 1/200 second at F8-11.

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