After the year of disasters Queensland has had this year, with the massive floods and cyclones, I wanted to shoot something that stood for the great work done by Queenslanders to clean up and move forward.

XXXX Gold is brewed about 10km from where I live. It is the most iconic beer of Qld here in Australia. They put some great advertisements out congratulating Queenslanders on their great fighting spirit after the disasters. What’s more Australian than a good Aussie Beer?

And as usual here is my set up image. The white paper behind the bottles made a massive difference to the colour of the bottles. Such a simple addition but so key to the final image.

I have also put together a short behind the scenes (BTS) video of the shoot explaining my lighting and set up. You can expect many more of this in the next few months as product photography is really appealing to me. So keep your eyes out and feel free to submit ideas of things you would like to learn how to light and shoot.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For these shots I decided I needed to come up with a way of blowing the ground white as well at the wall. Something I had not previously done. I have adapted my technique from that of Zack Arias who has been shooting portraits on seamless white for years. He has used a technique of positioning the subject on tile board that is sort of glossy to give some grounding to his subject by providing a reflection. It is a great medium for blowing white and it is also very cheap. I picked up 2 sheets of white melamine mdf (1200 x 900) for $14.50AUD each at my local hardware shop. I think you can get it in larger sizes also.

Here is the setup I used for the latest Bike shots. I have 2 Cactus KF36 strobes pointed at the back wall both set as 1/4 power. They are also both an equal distance from the back wall to give an even coverage of light. The wall will now become the 4th light source as it reflects light back at the camera and onto the floor.

The bike must be positioned further from the wall than the 2 cactus stobes so that no light from the strobes directly hits the bikes frame. You may need to flag your strobes like I have on the right hand strobe.

Another Cactus KF36 is used to expose the bike with the use of a shoot through umbrella. This will give a nice wrapping light to the bikes components. This would probably be best positioned directly behind the camera. The lower to the ground your camera is the better the reflection you will get from the mdf boards.

For the close up component shots, like gears and derailleurs, keep your camera settings the same and zoom in or move yourself closer to the components. The lights will work the same as long as you don’t directly stand in the path of the umbrella.

When it comes to the post processing it is much the same as I explain in my video blog post about white seamless shots. Simply up your exposure so that more areas are blown out white and then bring back some of the detail in the bike by increasing the blacks. Then run a curves adjustment layer and do a sharpen to the image. In the end I decided to delete the reflection the mdf boards gave me on the entire bike shots as they didn’t fit in with the eventual advertisements my brother will use the shots for.

If you have any further questions or want me to do a post processing video on the bikes let me know. I’m more than happy to do tutorials on anything you guys want. Just drop me a line on the contact page.

The setup for this was very easy.  Obviously for the actual shoot I will use a table and not my super comfy lounge.

I made use of all 3 of my lights. 2 bare bulb @1/4 power and the other shot through my umbrella @ 1/4 power.

Using my large white foam core boards I setup one as the base and the other about 2 feet behind the hat as my background. This board will provide fill-light that will bounce back at  the hat.

I shot from underneath the right corner of the umbrella. This gave me a nice angle on the hat with its leading logo on the peak of the hat.

I achieved a black shadow inside the hat by rolling up my black reflective umbrella material into a ball and sticking it inside the hat. Not sure I will go with this in the actual shoot as the hats will be the truckie style.

I then headed off to Photoshop to cleanup the image and make sure my white backdrop was pure white.

1. Added a Levels Adjustment Layer, and made sure my surrounding white areas are pure white
2. Added a Curves Adjustment Layer with a slight S Curve
3. Added a Colour Adjustment Layer to improve the yellows and greens
4. Added a Vibrancy Adjustment Layer and boosted the colours a little
5. Cropped the image to a tighter fit

The Client is very happy with the results of the test shoot and has set me up with 9 different hat designs to shoot and a heap of Mens shirts. I will blog about the actual shoot soon and let you know who the Clothing company is.  Oh and BTW the designs of their gear are very funky.

]]> http://www.thephotojourney.com/2009/12/03/capping-off-a-big-weekend-product-shoot/feed/ 1 http://www.thephotojourney.com/2009/08/05/worth-bottling/ http://www.thephotojourney.com/2009/08/05/worth-bottling/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:15:36 +0000 Scott http://www.thephotojourney.com/?p=503 We headed off to Tamborine Mountain here is Queensland for a wine and distillery tour about 2 weeks ago. We sampled plenty and bought a fair share also. But before I let Anna open these bottles I wanted to get some photos of them.

This is the International Award Winning Wattle Toffee Liqueur. The bottle is hand painted by the owner of the  Tamborine Mountain Distillery Alla.

Setup Details

For the shoot I wanted the bottles on a seamless white background with as much detail of the bottle as possible, and considering for my birthday in July I got a light stand and umbrella it it was time to put them to good use.

Using white foam core boards as the base and backdrop I could nuke the setup giving me a nice white environment.

As you can see the flash was setup at a 45deg angle to the bottle and slightly above. The Vivitar 285 was set @ 1/4 power and triggered with my Cactus wireless remotes. Lens used for the shots was my Canon 70-200mm f2.8. Reason I went with this was that my 17-55mm f4-5.6 wasn’t offering the DOF or sharpness I wanted.  I wanted a little more pop, and you just cant beat the sharpness the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 lens offers. Only thing was that I was shooting from the lounge room.

So what did I learn from this shoot? Firstly I have to ask myself why I hadn’t opened the packet of Jatz biscuits at the end of the table during the shoot(Man those things are addictive). And secondly  a larger white backdrop would have helpded limit post processing time, as each image required cropping and adding of white space. Think I will invest in larger foam core boards this week.

I’ll be doing more product photography based shots this weekend as I will be visiting my parents and Mum needs some of her Silk art and products shot for the launch of her new website. More info on that soon.

Here is a shot of the Lemon Myrtle Vodka that is certainly the best vodka I think I have ever had. I wouldn’t mind re-shooting this but on a black or dark gray backdrop.