New year and new work.
How I decided the right lighting for this product photo.
In this photo I wanted to created a strong image, using projected light to illuminate the centre of the bag and a white background to make the rest silhouette.
I enjoy product photography immensely, it is always an exciting challenge to work out the best approach to photographing a product. There were so many different ways to photograph this handbag, but not all of them would make the image pop out of the page and grab the attention that it deserves.
This product needed some really careful lighting, the clear plastic which lined the bag needed to be shown but not too much otherwise the resulting flair off it could have distracted the eye from the smaller secondary inner bag, the angle was important too. Making it look like it was caught in mid swing introduced another interesting element to the image.
I went for a hard light as a hard light will show up the detailed stitching and texture of the leather, by using a projector attached to a Picolite I introduced a shaft effect by adjusting the light shaping blades from within the projector attachment, it was also possible to focus the light so a sharp edge over the bag was achieved. This gave a silhouette which added further impact to the image.
When the bag was suspended from a C-Stand I realised that the chain looked different on the left and right, this was because of the angle of view was different for each length, the answer was to retouch in Photoshop by duplicating one of the chains, then with a bit of flipping and rotation place it where the other chain was, so I then had two identical chains looking good.
If you are interested - Shot using a PhaseOne IQ 100 on XF camera 120mm Macro lens and Broncolor Picolight with projector attachment.