Practical - Photographing products

Setting up in studio 

THE PROBLEM

I am really bad at photography. I would not have a clue how to properly set up a studio as I have not done this since my induction

THE SOLUTION

 I asked photography student Hannah Kin-Han Voong to help me make some product shots. Mostly to help me set up in the studio because it had been a long time since I'd done it. This gave me a better understanding of how to do it in the future. 

THE PROBLEM

We initially thought a black back drop would work best against the white box, however, when we shot it they came out extremely dark and the box looked like it was floating.. not good

THE SOLUTION

I then went and bought some grey paper and thought this may work better, I thought white again would make it look like it was floating or the box would get lost into the background. 

Grey worked much better. However, I wasn't happy with how the products were getting shot I had to keep changing the position of the box, something just wasn't working, it didn't look professional enough. 

We tried a lot of different angles, close ups, birds eye view, head on and then I could later go through and pick which work best. 

As I needed some for a banner on the website, some for mock ups, and some just to act alone as the toothpaste box on the toothpaste section of the website there had to be different view points. I figured it may be a case of editing them in Photoshop and cropping for certain images.

For the ones that were to be used just head on of the toothpaste for the toothpaste section I decided to shoot those on white because I wouldn't need a shadow for them. However, there wasn't much difference between that and the grey, so they would need editing in Photoshop.

I shot a couple of the boxes together as well

Overall, for my first time at product shooting I think it went okay (i'm no graphic designer) but after looking at the images, it wasn't completely the look I was going for. Hopefully working with product more in the future I'll get a better idea of it and perhaps get more advice from graphic designers as to the type of angles that look good. Also, I had to edit the photos a lot to get rid of some of the edges because I hadn't stuck them down very well, the double-sided tape was coming away and this showed up like a sore thumb in the product shots. They also looked a little dirty against the white background… thank god for photoshop.