Biscuit 8 Shoot for the Troops featured article on PDN

Glad to be a part of this amazing shoot and look forward to doing more of these in the near future. Congrats to Jax and the whole Biscuit 8 crew for pulling this off with such grace and professionalism. If you havent heard of B8 or don’t know what they are about, I encourage you to head over to their website and check em out.

Tonight, as I was cleaning out my studio, I came across several photo books from previous years sitting in a box that had almost been forgotten. I took a quick break to look through it for some new inspiration and found several pages of interest. Realizing that my lovely wife has a very nice black Coach purse (given to her as a gift ’cause we sure can’t afford it!), I had an idea and after dinner, and spending some quality time with Traci, I headed back into my studio as she headed for bed. I had to try this idea before I could sleep!

Sculpting the Right Light

I knew for this particular set I wanted a hard light with a wrap around fill. Up to now, I had been shooting mostly with soft light and I really wanted something with more punch and definition. I took off my 2′x2′ Elinchrom softbox and replaced it with a 7″reflector with a 20 grid spot and used my second  Elinchrom 2′x2′ softy on the other side for the wrap around fill. I then pulled down some white seemless and taped it to my product table to get a nice gradation from white to gray to black.

With the lighting pretty much set, I began to concentrate on getting the product looking right in camera. After a few test shots, I felt that it was lacking a little life so I started to add some supporting props. I really was getting bored with just a plain white background and wanted something a bit different so I pulled out my aluminum power briefcase and placed it under the purse to give some texture. I felt that it gave the handbag a little more character, as if the owner was about to embark on a power lunch sales call. I added in some sunglasses and an iPhone for good measure. (pics below)

Coach purse with briefcase underneath for texture and depth. Image© Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Coach purse with briefcase, sunglasses and iPhone. Image© Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Pictured with additional props: sunglasses, iPhone, altoid mints, and a few business cards. Image© Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Eliminating Distractions

After toying around with the props for a few minutes, I realized that the image was starting to become more about the props and less about the main product… this wonderful black Coach handbag! I cut all the extras, save the briefcase ’cause I really liked the texture I was getting from the ribbed panel. Then, in a bold and brave move… I released the camera from the tripod and started just shooting the handbag from different angles. Sometimes I can get so locked into getting things perfectly squared up and aligned just right (perhaps that’s my architectural side coming out), I forget that it’s about MAKING pictures, not taking pictures. I wasnt getting any feel or emotion being stuck on iron stick.

As soon as I was free from that restriction, I started to find my groove again and fired off a series of shots that looked pretty close to what I was after. A few more snaps and I felt that I had it as close as I was going to get it for tonight anyway.

Post Touchups and Workflow

If you have followed my posts before, you may remember that when I shoot in studio, I always try to shoot tethered into Adobe Lightroom. My 20″ cinema display beats the heck out of a 3″ LCD on the back of my Canon 5d! Plus, it really reduces the time in transferring all the images from my shoot, when I’m done shooting, Im ready to rock n’ roll in LR.

I quickly sorted through the keepers and the losers. For this set, there were certainly more losers than keepers, but I did find a few. I made my global corrections including clarity, vibrance, and saturation along with tonal curves and increasing the blacks a touch. After getting them prepped, I then made a virtual copy of the two that I felt like best represented my original vision for this product… kind of a throw back 1930’s Hollywood look with a twist. I made a few different virtual copies to experiment with, then decided on the final two for my selects. Below are the two finished images I came up with.

Image one of two. Black leather handbag from Coach leatherworks. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Image two of two. Black leather handbag from Coach leatherworks. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

What do You Think?

I think my favorite is image number two and feel like it best represents my original vision for this shoot. What do you think?

So there is another example of my creative workflow. If you have any questions or would like to comment on any of my images or workflow, please feel free to do so by using the comment form below. If you have suggestions for future photo content, or have questions regarding studio lighting, send me your questions and I’ll do my best to answer them and maybe even feature your question in a future blog post. And don’t forget to signup for our new E-Photo updates and newsletter. About once a month I send out an update email with a highlight of my most recent photos so be sure to signup to get the latest from Jackson Visuals.

Thanks!
Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

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

I had been stewing over the idea of shooting some beverages for a long time. I wanted something that looked clean and crisp, but still had that “alive” feeling to it. After looking through some images of my photo heroes including Martin Wannocott, who is the quintesential beverage master, I was truly inspired, but figured today I’ll just try for something “simple”. Of course, those of you who have ever tried to shoot beverages, know that is an oxymoron… simple is just not in the cards, baby.

Glass of Perrier with lime wedge.

Nonetheless, I set up my tripod Canon 5d for the shoot. Starting in the kitchen where we have WONDERFUL natural wrap around lite, I thought this was going to be ideal for the look I wanted. The only difficult thing was going to be freezing the fizz from the sparkling Perrier. That would probably take some strobes. I tried a few quick test shots, but it wasnt working so I moved everything back into the studio and setup my strobes in a split lighting setup. Key light was camera right just off to the side of the subject and second light was back left to give the subject some shape. I added a gelled backlight for some added color, but wound up not really using it much after I got going.

It took about 30 min before my creative juices started flowing. Since I was shooting tethered into Lightroom, I could view my images right out of the camera on my 20″ monitor….which really is schaweeeeet. That’s really the only way to shoot in studio. After getting several overall shots, I got a little more creative and started drilling down into the details of the setup and found myself really interested in capturing the bubbles floating up from the bottom of the glass. I eventually worked my way into some more abstract type images, which it seems I tend to gravitate towards. With a background in graphic design, a lot of my images have a graphic feel to them.

Ramekin of lime and lemon wedges on white background.

Before I realized it, I had spent about 2 hours in the studio setting up, getting some test frames, adjusting the lights and subjects, and in the end, I got about 100 images that I then edited down to about 25 that I really liked. From there, I tightened down that edit even further to about 8 that really showed some variance and that I felt represented the work I had done. I spent another 20 minutes doing some global tweaks in Lightroom, then uploaded the top images to my image archive on Photoshelter. After uploading, I added my commercial stock pricing licenses and sent them on to my public gallery. I finished the task by Tweeting and posting to my Facebook fanpage the final results so all my followers could see how I had spent my Saturday afternoon. Below is the gallery of images from yesterday’s shoot.

Lots of fun, and once you get a workflow down, it makes it a LOT easier. Photoshelter has really been a workflow boost and has cut hours off my time by allowing me to Tweet and Facebook my galleries right from my account dashboard. The extra nice thing about using Photoshelter is that I can post images from my account right from within my blog. If your a photographer, you at least need to check it out and see if Photoshelter works for you. Great stuff.

Hopefully, today’s post gives you all a glimpse into my creative workflow. I’ll try to share more about my processes in upcoming posts. In the meantime, if you have specific questions about the creative process, my workflow, or anything else that may have peaked your interest, post a response and I’ll do my best to give you an answer. If you have ideas for future topics, or would like to see something specific, feel free to respond as well.

Cheers!
-Chad