Just Keep Shooting

Today I was reminded of that movie Finding Nemo. The phrase; “Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming” was running through my little head and subsequently translated into “Just Keep Shooting, Just Keep Shooting.” I was starting to get real depressed with all the cold gray weather. I needed to get a little creative, so I took some time to work on a few ideas I’ve been stewing over for a while. This was a great excercise in  working through a concept from start to finish and made my day!

Shooting a Concept Image

Below are three images from today that I was working on. I wanted to string together a series of products that might be used in an ad campaign. For this concept, I started in the kitchen and began looking for things that were similar, fortunately, I didn’t have to look very long, and I quickly found that I must really like the color scheme of black and silver!

After selecting the items for my shoot, I then began to look at the products and determine what kind of look and feel what suit these best. I felt like something a little edgy, a little classical, a little sexy, and a little humor. I feel pretty good about the end product, although, I’ll probably remove the text and let the images stand for themselves.

Utility Never Looked So Good - Concept product shot of a Starbucks Barista blade style coffee grinder. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Concept product shot of a Cuisenart 12 cup coffeemaker. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Bringin Sexy Back is a conceptual image shot for self promotion and incorporates an Oster dual slice toaster. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Overcoming Obstacles in Photographic Lighting

Shooting products like these are a bit tricky in that you have to be a little more careful with the shadows and highlights with such reflective material as chrome and aluminum. The blacks can easily block up, and the highlights get nuked. I shot these three images with basically one light. I used a combination of reflectors, fills, and flags to sculpt the light to create the shadows and highlights that I liked. That’s the beauty of working with a reflector in this situation, you can really change the reflections a lot depending on the angle of the reflector. If it was another light, you may run into bigger issues such as too much light, or not being able to define the light in the right areas. Sometimes you need more than one light, but I felt that one light was plenty for this job… and it was a good challenge to make the most of one light.

As a rule, I try to shoot for the finished product as much as possible IN CAMERA. Yeah, Photoshop is great and can really save your butt in tight situations, but I’ve found that if I spend a bit more time getting it right up front, it almost always saves me hours on the post time. I only did minor touchups in post for these images including the added text, spot removal, and adding a little extra color and punch to the lighted buttons. You can’t do EVERYTHING in camera, but it is a great way to teach yourself about different lighting styles and how light reacts to different surfaces, textures, and colors. If you try to correct everything in Photoshop, you’ll not only drive yourself crazy from being behind the computer all day, you won’t learn to light very well.

Full Gallery of Product and Conceptual Images

Below is the full gallery link for all three images as well as other product images I have worked on recently. Simply click on the link or the image gallery below to view the full size images on my website.

Hope you found this article to be helpful, and as always, feel free to comment on the photos or ask any questions you may have about the creative process and workflow. Next time I think I’ll try jewelry!

Cheers,
Chad

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 2:32 am and is filed under Creative Articles, Photography Portfolios. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.