Earlier this fall I had the opportunity to do a product shoot for a local soft drink company who was taking their product national in Whole Foods. Made from agave cactus nectars, these drinks are competing for shelf space with a whole host of competitors. The owner was rolling out new labeling and needed pics quick. He chose me because of my experience in shooting highly reflective surfaces, particularly glass bottles. To make the images more compelling, the owner wanted the bottles to look like they had just come out of a cooler. Fair enough, but now I needed to figure out how to do it.
The solution turned out to be fairly simple. I set the shot up as I normally would for shooting glass, got the lighting right, checked some test images and liked what I had. Then I used a common household spray bottle filled with water (nozzle set to a fine mist) and sprayed the bottles lightly. The water beaded up naturally, and I started shooting. It was actually pretty simple.
A couple of things to note when doing this:
- If you need to respray them, let them dry first. Towelling the bottles off can result in torn labels.
- Use extra caution if the labels are printed on regular paper. Let the water sit too long, and they will change color.
- Take your time. Rearrange the items as necessary, let them dry completely, then rewet as needed.
But Wait, There’s More…
Just a couple of weeks ago I came across some very cool photos of spiderwebs that had waterdrops on them. The photographer, Sam Pierson, had gone out one morning after a foggy night and got some incredible shots (link above goes to a great gallery of them). When I saw this, I thought “those are awesome, I want to make one”. I don’t have any good webs like that in my area (at least I haven’t found any), but when I do locate some, I plan to take my spray bottle with me and see if the same principle can be applied to the webs. I think you can make the wet look whenever you want.
Special thanks to Sam for letting me use his picture here. You simply must check out his gallery, he has some outstanding images there. For more information about Oogave Soda, check out their website.
Colorado Product Photography – Arjuni
I love shooting hard-to-photograph items. I am getting pretty good at it. But this time, I really had my work cut out for me. Arjuni is a Denver purveyor of hair weaves. The owner came to me with what seemed like a simple request – take photos of roughly 27 samples for use on the new website. It was something of a rush job, because the grand opening of the site was two weeks out. On top of that, two other photographers had been tried beforehand, but could not deliver images to her satisfaction. Great, no pressure there.
I experiemented a bit with some different positioning and lighting, and then settled on something that seemed to work really well. The owner was pleased. I started getting comments like “Phenomenal work!” and “Thanks for all of your hard work. You’ve definitely captured some gems that I’m excited about!” Really, this is what it is all about. Sure, I get to make images that make me happy, on my own time, but when I am on the clients’ clock, I need to deliver.
That said, I really like doing product photography here in the Denver area. So far I have done some neat things and met very interesting people. I have started to see repeat business, which is a good measure of success I think. If you need a product shot, even if it is not a hard to photograph surface, contact me for a quote. I have no doubt I will deliver images you can be proud of, and ones that will help sell your product.