1. Staying in shape
My focus actually starts before the product leaves Chris’s
office. I ask him to make sure each of the pieces is properly stuffed so they
maintain their shape during shipping. I try to remind all my clients that my
photos are only as good as the products they send. This is especially true for leather
bags and cases. I augment the stuffing before I shoot, but it doesn’t end
there. I also often have to figure out things like how to make an item stand up
(weights placed at the bottom of a large handbag or knapsack lower the center
of gravity and keep it from falling over), or how to suspend straps or handles
while shooting so they look natural (a white wire coat hanger holds up straps
nicely and is easily removed in Photoshop.)
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Notice the wire coat hanger used to
extend the straps. The hanger was removed and straps straightened a bit in
Photoshop. I also used Photoshop to remove the dimples along the far end of the
bag.
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2. Losing weight in Photoshop
These days I often spend more time in Photoshop enhancing the
product than I do actually photographing it. In Photoshop I can smooth out bumps
and bulges, remove small surface imperfections, and reconstruct corners or
edges of the product so it looks more natural and appealing. I will often copy
and paste an entire area of the product from one side to the other to increase
symmetry and balance. There’s also a tool called “Liquify” in Photoshop that
allows me to bend and twist areas of the product to refine its shape (this tool
also works great for enhancing the appearance of my portrait clients, allowing
me to slim them down or tone them up without them ever having to go to the gym J ).
3. Go towards the light
As a commercial product photographer, my time is
often spent trying to minimize highlights and reflections bouncing off an item.
Shooting leather presents the opposite challenge: it often absorbs more light
than it reflects. This is especially true with the black or dark brown smooth,
non-distressed leathers. This means is I need to use my lights to create
highlights to bring out the richness and texture of the items. I generally
shoot Chris’s products using four light sources: a large rectangular softbox
suspended above and slightly in front of the product (this is my key light); a
second, gridded strobe that I can aim at the front, darker areas of the bag (I
generally use a grid to help focus the light);
and then two white cards (foam core) on either side of the bag. The key light
being placed above the product creates a soft, natural shadow below the item,
while also creating a highlight along the upper edges of the bag. The white
cards reflect the illumination from my key light and help brighten/define the
edges of the bag.
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Four light sources: 1) key light from
above; 2) gridded spot creating the highlight on the front of the bag; 3 & 4)
white cards on either side reflecting light from the key light along the edges
of the bag.
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4. Inside Out
As part of the work I do for Chris, I shoot the
interiors of the bags. Shooting a black bag with a black interior is a product
photographer's worst nightmare. Luckily, Chris's goods usually come in three or
more colors, including tan with a matching interior. Often the biggest
challenge becomes keeping the bag open while shooting. I use a compliment of
clamps and bungee cords (removing them later in Photoshop) to keep the inner
compartments visible while shooting. To light the interior, I use a mix of a
large softbox and one or more gridded strobes. We also use props (laptop, iPad,
cell phone, etc.) to display the many useful pockets, sleeves and compartments
in Chris's bags.
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Bungee cords can help in
keeping a bag open. Notice also the "Le Donne"
label inside the bag: it was straightened using the Liquify tool
in Photoshop. Finally, inserting props (in this case pens and an old school
calculator) highlight the interior's features.
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5. Getting a sense of scale
Good product photos not only build interest and entice a
purchase, they also convey useful information. Chris is well aware that an
important feature to his customers is the size and scale of the products he
sells. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, we use a photo of the product
styled on a mannequin to convey its overall shape and size. This is a typical
image from Chris's latest collection.
6. What’s my color and finishing touches
Getting true color reproduction of a product is very
important. I start by doing a custom white balance in-camera for each lighting
setup. This tells the camera what true white is and is necessary to get an
accurate reading of the product’s colors. However, that may not be enough. A
problem I ran into early on with Chris’s bags was an over-saturation of the red
channel. This wasn't anyone's fault: sometimes digital cameras tend to
over-saturate one of the three (red, green, blue) color channels. There was
some trial and error but I found I needed to desaturate the red channel in Photoshop
to bring the color back to true. I also then adjust my overall exposure levels in
Photoshop to bring the background to solid white (being careful to maintain the
shadow underneath the product) and generally enhance the contrast of the item.
One thing to keep in mind is the bag's hardware may blow out when adjusting
levels. Silver zippers, d-rings, buckles, etc., reflect much more light than
the leather they are attached to. For this reason, I sometimes do two separate
exposures (one each for the hardware and the bag), and then combine the images
in Photoshop.
The last steps are to crop and sharpen the image. For Chris’s
leather goods, I prefer to use the High Pass filter in Photoshop to sharpen the
image, as opposed to the Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen filter. This is more a
matter of taste, but almost all digital images need some sharpening; more so if
they are going to be printed.
I welcome any questions or comments and check back in a few
weeks for my next post.
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