Shoot Preparation for Product Photography.

Relevant to all types of photography shoots, product photography requires a lot preparation and planning. Throughout my product photography process, planning has become essential to all my shoots especially for getting this shot attached below.

Photograph taken by Molly Macafee.

As this was quite a complicated shoot, I preplanned the set out and lighting, in order to be time-effective and get the shoot done in the time permitted. To plan this, I made lighting diagrams and diagrams of how I planned to set it out and the product placement.

Layout Diagram.

This image above is a rough set diagram made pre-shoot, in order to create a clear plan of how to photograph this image. To produce this shot, the products were all hot glue gunned onto wooden sticks and either stuck into a polystyrene block, or sellotaped onto a metal bar to create an explosion effect.

Lighting Diagram.

Similar to the layout diagram, I created a lighting diagram pre-shoot to get me thinking about what lighting may be most effective for this design preliminary to it taking place. This lighting diagram was helpful however, when participating with this shoot it became instantly obvious that each of the products would have to be lit separately and placed into a composite for the final image. This was to avoid the image becoming flat, and to help the products stand out more.

If I was to improve this image, I would have the products tilted more as this may give a more explosive effect to the overall image.

Post Production

Due to the fact that this image had to be created as a composite, many images in one, this meant there was more than usual to do in post-production. This is because, all the products shot had to be cut out from their original background, edited and then placed in the overall image. This was a lot of work however I think the results make it worth it.