Product Photography Advice
- By Michael Harrison
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- 08 Jan, 2014
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Our hints and tips
How to get the best results from your product shoot
Product selection When choosing which products to bring along to your shoot, try and choose your best possible sample of your work to show off how good your quality is. Try and avoid anything with dents and scratches, it also helps sometimes if you bring along duplicates.You don’t then incur extra cost of retouching all your shots.
Shoot list When shooting lots and lots of products we always find it handy to label up your products and write up a shoot list containing all those vital individual and group shots that you require. We also recommend that if it is possible, plan to bring along similar products, by doing this, it means that we won’t have to keep changing our lighting set ups. This is more cost effective, meaning you get more for your buck! A list will give the shoot a clear sense of direction and ensure that you get all the key shots you require for your website and brochures with right product codes and catalogue numbers.
Clean stock If possible clean your products before you arrive at the shoot location or studio, this can sometimes gain you more of that valuable shooting time with us.
Image format We always find it helpful to work with our clients to shoot images that will work in a shape and format that will suit their needs. Especially when shooting group shots, the natural format of your images can be shot in a number of ways, square, panoramic (to fit a web banner), tall or rectangular. Try and have a clear idea of how your images will be used when arriving at the shoot so we can make sure you get the best out of your time with us.
Schedule We understand that you have deadlines and so if you plan ahead and allow plenty of time between collating your products and the date of the shoot, any faults that are found can be rectified. This also allows for manufacturing delays, by preparing well in advance we will be able to almost guarantee a slot in our diary for you so all deadlines can be met.
Concept We are happy to discuss and explore your ideas of backgrounds, styling and lighting and also add to them by meeting up before the shoot to create the best images we possibly can for you.
The time frame is very short between completion and handover so flexibility and communication is key with all parties concerned and Formm have been able to facilitate easy access and help from Formm's clients.
Using a combination of lighting, complex retouching and "the golden hour" we have produced some work we are extremely proud of in the past few years. The technique we use to create these images transforms cold, dull shots, into warm, vibrant images that are worthy of the technical and hard work that goes into creating these amazing spaces.
Take a look at some before and after shots!
From our Imacon to Hasselblad cameras, we can bring out laptop out, shoot direct to our 17 inch Macbook Pro so you can see exactly is what were shooting!
If you're product is needing a background we also have a large variety of backgrounds, varying in colour that we can also bring out to you.
We've had some extreme weather this year in the UK with the Beast from the East battering us early on in the year, but the summer we usually dont get in the UK has been very kind to us.
With the lovely warm weather it gives us a great chance to get out into the sun and shoot!
Quicktrack are a company that manufacture apparatus to wheel align anything from cars to large lorries, meaning a lot of their product is rather large.
Below is a behind-the-scenes shot showing the capacity of our studio to get this large product on a background and lit!