Aside from the location shoots, I have to do studio work for our various magazines, the majority of this type of photography relating to products that are sent in for testing.
My last post was about lightpainting and how I'd use it in a work situation but more than anything, that post spurred me on to thinking about efficiency and enjoyment. I love using flash but when you have limited resources and an even more limited studio space, actually setting up can be a nightmare. The number of times I've ended up just walking away, I've lost count. I suppose what I'm saying is if you're not enjoying the shoot when you should have full control, then things need to change.
Take today for example; I'd been out this morning doing a location shoot but got back to the office mid-afternoon. Pics were retouched and sorted. Anyway, after spending some time twiddling my thumbs I was asked at the 11th hour to get some rod shots done for a test that was going to press imminently.
Anyway, I pitched the idea of going away from shooting against white (my pet hate) and using a dominant background colour to isolate the product better so the product stood out. The rod had a red blank so I had to watch for clashing colours but my gut feeling in these situations is when I'm unsure and need a result quickly, a black background will always work.
I'll brush past the argument over which material is best (velvet or plexiglass/glass are my faves) but today I just grabbed the black cloth that was on the shelf and started from there. Time was of the essence today (I probably had 30 minutes all-told) but I knew that getting the flash heads set up would eat into that so I just elected to shoot 'sans' flash and rely on lightpainting, which is currently floating my boat.
I'm really getting familiar with doing this now. Tripod, manual focus, set camera to something long with a wide(ish) aperture and just paint away with my phone. I think I've been lucky with this so far, as I'm doing very few test shots to get my bearings. It could also be that I had an editor breathing down my neck from the other side of the studio curtain!
(ABOVE) This was one of three tests exposures, just to give myself an idea of how much 'painting' the shot needed.
With rod tests (and most other tests) we rely on a main image - usually the product in use outdoors - plus a selection, usually three or four, of close-up images that highlight certain key parts of the product. In this rod's case those were the reel seat, the guides, the graphics and the text showing its length and casting weight (how much it will cast at once). I'd quickly run over what was needed with the designer and editor and took it from there, doing composition on-the-fly but always remembering that they have to remain clear, illustrative photographs.
10 minutes in the studio and I was done. 10 minutes later on I was processing the images in ACR and 10 minute after that i was heading home to pick up the little 'un from the minder, happy that the magazine team were happy with the results.
My guess is that A) if I'd used flash I wouldn't have got things done in the time I had, and B) that if I'd shot against white the images wouldn't have had nowhere near as much impact. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but black definitely paid off today....
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