Product Photography Scotland

(The background is A.I-generated.)

This old lighter has a bit of what I think some people might call ‘Patina’. I took a second shot for the flame, at higher ISO and wider aperture.

I had thought of capturing the laser beam from this thermometer, but in the end I didn’t have a way to make smoke, so I just photographed it as-is.

The chrome base of this lipstick is, obviously, quite reflective. What I needed was a sheet of white foamcore, with a cutout for the camera / lens. However I didn’t have one that I wanted to sacrifice.

This music player — I thought about getting a gradient reflection on the screen, but in the end decided to just overlay a straight capture of the illuminated screen instead.

This can had a little dent in it but I photographed it because it was handy, also because it’s quite colourful.

The background was a little flat in the original file, so I colourised it.

I used standard reflectors on two strobes here. Instead of firing them through a scrim, I tried using the lights without scrim. I’m not sure about the look of this but it was something different.

This pen looked rather flat on a white background, so I altered the colour balance a little in Photoshop.

This light meter is what I use when I’m taking pictures with my film cameras. Lighting is from an overhead flash unit through a diffusion panel.

This remote is pretty old — maybe twenty years or more. The background was generated in Photoshop.

I might come back and photograph this tool, which I bought from Amazon, again.

Lighting was from the right.

This old camera came in the post today. Lighting setup is pretty simple: one strobe to the right, bounce fill from the left.

I didn’t have a battery to hand, or I would have had some numerals on the LCD display of this tester.

Lighting was from the right, with bounce from a mirror at left.

I decided to re-photograph this pair of headphones, this time lit from above. It was a little tricky getting even lighting on both earpieces, as I was using just one light. I might revisit these again in future.

I lit this from above, with one strobe through a diffusion panel.

The background is A.I. generated.

I spent some time editing this image to bring out the golden colour of the oil.

Lighting was a large softbox from the left, with a reflector at right.

I got this machine a few weeks ago from Amazon.

It measures blood pressure.

Lighting it was a bit difficult: I couldn’t get a nice reflection on the face of the machine, despite trying for quite a while.

I’m thinking maybe an overhead light for my table would be handy, though that’s a bit more complex to set up than having lights to the side.

This pair of headphones presented a challenge: how to light them so that both earphones had the light bouncing off them at the correct angle.

I used two studio strobes, each through a diffusion panel; one at camera left and one to the right.

The background is A.I.-generated.

It took quite a while to get the lighting just right.

Product photography: not as easy as you might think.

I tried focus-stacking for this image, but it didn’t work out properly: the end result was pixelated and generally pretty messy.

So I tried stopping my lens down to the minimum aperture [f36] and the result is a bit better, if not quite perfect.

I think what you might need here is a perspective control lens, though I’m not sure even that would bring everything completely into focus.

The background was generated in Adobe Photoshop, using the generative A.I. feature.

[The subject here is my old FitBit watch — a shiny new item would have been better, but you have to work with what you’ve got.]

I used two studio strobe lights here: one through a piece of opal perspex behind the clock; another through some diffusion material to the right.

There’s also some bounce-fill from a piece of matt silver card to the left of the picture.

Next up, I think I might try a photograph of a watch, which will be more challenging.

I had photographed this bottle, or one like it, several months ago.

All I had then were two small flash units.

Today I received in the mail a couple more studio lights, which gives me a few more options.

Here, I used a softbox from the right and some opal perspex behind the bottle.

I lit the label with an optical snoot — just a cheap Chinese one, but for now it’s adequate.

I did some retouching in Photoshop to accentuate the colour of the oil.

Looking around for something to take a photograph of, I found this Stanley spirit level.

I had to use the minimum aperture on my Nikkor lens (f36) to get it all in focus.

I also had to do a bit of retouching, since there was a bit of damage to one of the glasses.

This measuring tape was a little scuffed as it had been kicking around the house for a while, so I had to clean it up a little in Photoshop.

Light was from the right through a sheet of diffusion material, with bounce-fill from a sheet of matt silver card on the left.

The lights I’m waiting on should be here at the weekend.

Looking for something to photograph, I decided to do a little food photography with this muffin.

I’m currently avoiding sugar, so photographing this bun was a better option than eating it.

Lighting for my table-top studio was with one monobloc strobe though some diffusion material.

I bought this bottle of T-Cut to polish my car, since I was thinking about trading it in for something newer.

This image would look more professional with another light from the left.

I should have another two lights from eBay by tomorrow I hope…

I had a few problems to overcome with the chrome lid on this jar: mainly controlling reflections and colour balance.

After some retouching work in Photoshop, I had something close to the image I wanted.

I have a couple of lights coming in the post, which should make this sort of product shot a bit easier. (I was just working with one studio light here, something commercial photographers wouldn’t do, in all probability.)

Looking for an interesting bottle to photograph, I found this bottle of ‘Protect Oil’.

I’m not sure what this might be for, but it’s an interesting colour.

At least this was a new, off-the-shelf bottle, so I didn’t have to clean it up before photographing it.

The background was a bit problematic — I used a cheap diffuser, when I think what I need is some frosted acrylic.

This particular small electrical product is a razor I bought a while ago.

I used the Godox Lux Junior flash units here — one quite close on either side of the razor, with the power dialled back quite a bit.

The background was isolated, then colourised.

I’ve been using Godox’s Lux Junior flash for a few months.

It’s incredibly useful for lighting small products like this perfume bottle.

Here, I held one unit above and slightly in front of the perfume bottle; and a second one just above the backdrop (A sheet of card).

This image looks a lot different to the one I made earlier of the same bottle — it’s maybe a little more dramatic. (It’s an old bottle, too, so it’s a little scuffed here and there.)

Still quite a way to go.