Photographing “Stuff” is Challenging.

How hard can it be to take a picture of a perfume bottle?

How about 4-5 hours for the first try and then about 2 hours for the second try.

The time required did not include the setup and the teardown of the equipment. It did, however, include post-processing in DXO and Affinity.

I have learned over the past several weeks that tabletop photography is more than throwing light at an object. It really is similar to photographing a human being.

You have to plan the genre..high key, vs. Low key. You have to determine if you want or need props and you have to determine what type of lighting will you use. Will the light be mostly “hard” light, that is light that is not shot through some diffusion material like a softbox or a scrim or will it be soft light. Will you use any gels or reflectors? Where will you place the highlights in order to bring out detail in the object?

Are there any Logos that will require special lighting techniques? I say special lighting techniques because you can’t just front light a product as you can person to make it look good.

Front lighting a person can be very helpful to hide skin imperfections, but this is not very helpful when you are trying to show the intricate details in many products.

One thing holds true for photographing a person and an object. Your goal is to make both look their best.

One big glaring difference in lighting products vice lighting people is this. People do not generally produce a direct reflection. That is, you do not have to deal with a direct reflection on people unless they are wearing glasses. But, a lot of products are very reflective. For example, a stainless steel coffee pot. It can be very time-consuming photographing shiny metal.

Taking the time to practice product photography has helped deepen my knowledge on how to light a person and how to manipulate light more effectively.

Ok, enough about my experience. Here are some of the details that I worked through while accomplishing this shot.

The first challenge was trying to retain the color of the perfume in the bottle. I accomplished this by using a dark background and yellow construction paper under some glass.

The second challenge was the logo. If I lit the bottle from the front, it would reflect into the lens of the camera and blow out all of the detail as well as put too much light on the background. So, I used a snooted lumedyne flash with a yellow gel over the top of the perfume bottle and a speed light to the camera left with a yellow gel bounced into a white card.

The snoot provided the bright yellow highlight on the bottle and the bounce card helped bring up the illumination on the front of the bottle.

I positioned the camera for a higher angle shot. If I lowered the angle the lettering for the logo would not be seen since it would get lost in the black background. Also, the yellow color of the perfume itself would have been obscured by the black background.

The shot turned out ok, but there was not enough detail on the top portion of the bottle and the horizon line ran through the top part of the bottle. The class I was attending suggested lowering the horizon line.

So, here is the corrected image. I lowered the horizon line and brought out more detail on the top of the bottle. I also used a speed light on the background to add some yellow to retain the color of the perfume and to give some contrasting color so the black letters of the Logo could be seen.

Here is the set used for the corrected shot.

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Perfume is Time Consuming