Product photography 2nd attempt

[wilgk]

After some advice, suggestion & encouragement from the team here, I have recently undertaken some of the product photos for students' art work at school.

As always suggestions for improvement are welcome.

Some of the Architectural models





Some of the framed with reflective glass challenges





and one of the robotic ones, this is a pneumatic arm system..



and finally, the fog machine & chiller box system were a big hit with the boys!

[IzzieK]

Those were all fun shots! What a treasure you've collected there! And your students are all very creative...envy you! Lots of photo ops without even leaving too far away...

[Loose Canon]

Hi Kay!

This must’ve been a blast of a shoot!

Darn fine work here. Location shoot. Lot’s of stuff going on. Even including people in the shots? Excellent work. And the fog rocks! No wonder it was a hit!

Great lighting, compositions.

I would have loved to have watched this shoot!

So a couple of questions if I may?

Did you set these shots up (backgrounds, displays, table tops etc.) or did you shoot them in situ so to speak and just light them? I’m just curious as to how the shoot went down.

What did you use for lighting?

Were you working alone or did you have an assistant?

How many items did you end up shooting?

What is the end use for these?

[Mike Buckley]

Very nice job, Kay, especially considering that you are new at this. Next time around try to light the architectural models to display their three-dimensional nature more. Lighting them less evenly to produce shadows will go a long way toward accomplishing that goal.

[Shadowman]

Nice captures.

[Donald]

Compliments, Kay. Good work.

I take Mike's point re lighting. I thought the first one was a picture as opposed to a 3D model.

[wilgk]

Thankyou all for your comments,
I am lucky Izzie in that I get the chance to include photography into my day job!
Thanks Mike & Donald, yes I see what you mean, I've taken the 'soft shadow' a wee bit far around the lighting compass.
Speaking of a compass, I did draw up a lighting diagram before starting out.

Thankyou Terry for your interest & encouragement, I'll try & answer as best I can.
The venue is a seperate campus from the main school, where the senior (last 3 years) of students are bused to and from for their subjects.
The subjects range from studio art, to design technology -wood and VCD, design technology- textiles etc.
One room had black curtains hung floor to ceiling & then it was anything goes.
I had a chance in advance to see what was done last year, 1 thing I did notice was some of the students and or artworks blended in to the background.
So I set up a 'white area' as well, in case some items looked better there.
Lighting was speedlights through shoot through brollies and a soft box for the black set.
Then continuous LED bat lights coupled with window for the White.
Grey card was used for WB
They did say they had a fog machine, but glad I took mine with my chiller box (DIY) as they hadn't seen that before.
The photos will be used as part of entries of their work into competitions.
The school has an Art Show over a weekend, so the photos will go into the program for that.
Then into the end of year magazine, some other pieces from younger students were also brought in, those photos went into a PPP that the Teacher in Charge gave to other staff to show development over the years.
I think that's all
It took 2-3 hours over 3 evenings, then quite a few hours over a weekend to complete the processing.
For a total of about 250 images...
A big job, but a great chance for me to try something new & hopefully for the staff to be happy with.
The highlight for me was talking to the young man who draws the cartoon work. The Dizzy Toys is a real shop which he was commissioned to do the work for..anyway he is applying to go to the same University to a graphic art/design course....where I went 30 years ago to do an Ultrasound course.... He thought that was kind of neat too.

[Loose Canon]

Thanks for that Kay!

Awesome! That IS a big job and you jumped right into the Big Middle of it! The results certainly reflect the pre-planning, thought, and experience brought to bear for this gig.

You are my Hero!

Have you made your submissions yet or heard any feedback?

[Rebel]

They look great to me Kay, and I love that seascape.. is that chalks or pastels?

[Manfred M]

Nicely done Kay; these are all excellent images.

hese are a significant improvement over the initial test shots you posted prior to heading out to do these, especially given the circumstances you were shooting under. I suspect you learned a lot spending this much time and effort in producing them.

Lesson's learned? I'd go along with Mike's comment on lighting the models to produce a more 3-D look. Doing more product photography is definitely on my "to do" list over the winter, and I'm going to spend some time looking at Mike and Terry's work before I get started on that.

[wilgk]

They look great to me Kay, and I love that seascape.. is that chalks or pastels?

Thanks Matt, the seascape was in think chalks & the self Portrait was pastels done by the same young man, as the Dizzy Toys pieces.
He spent some hours with his iPhone at the site, then produced the artwork from there.

[wilgk]

Thanks again Terry & Manfred, I have been fortunate to have this learning opportunity, the challenge now is to build on it & hopefully gain more confidence ..... & I did suggest to Miss 23 yrs Fashionista that her bedroom complete with ensuite and second driveway with access not through the main part of the house, would be a PERFECT studio space, where I could leave things set up to practice & perhaps have Portrait clients....
Didn't end well