DIY Product Photos

For those of you lovely people that read my blog you may have noticed some changes of late, namely everything's gone a bit whiter. Like the studio clear out I felt it was time to clean up. Now that my focus has shifted more towards the illustration side of things, I needed to place the emphasis more on that side of my output. As part of this overhaul I knew my product photos needed help, previously lack of time was my excuse but no longer. I like taking photos (of people/dogs) and once upon a time I did a photography course in a proper studio and learnt about aperture and shutter speed etc, my issue is I get bored. I did some visual research and made notes on what caught my eye and sketched out some composition ideas. I didn't want to go the all white backdrop route, can't tell you why exactly.

I needed props, or so I thought... I know I'll tie in the subject of the card I'm shooting with an appropriate prop. Organisational disorder ensued, as those familiar with my output know my cards range from food puns to animals, that's a lot of props everything from a microphone to potatoes!

After an hour or so I was back to a simple backdrop and shooting different angles. What I learned from this is you have to take risks and even if something looks great on a tiny screen it doesn't always translate and vice versa. Below are all unedited photos, no cropping or whitening....yet.

All were taken using my Canon 60D and natural daylight only, (read I hate flash) and without a tripod (yes I have one but I'm lazy and the dogs were in the way.)

So after I downloaded my morning's efforts and I really didn't mind some of the prop shots after all.  I think the ones that work have enough visual interest to look editorial. There were some that were overboard but I was trying to do to much, less is more. Still got about another 60 cards to shoot but it's a start, just going to need to make sure they are all cohesive. Feel free to comment below.

Card on a plate, through the viewfinder the white contrast looked good

A lot of wood !

The idea of the card being on display

Shells tie in with the fish theme could be repeated for Crab, again did not think this would work.

Going for the hand sketched angle, hated it at the time but now really like it.

Simple clothes line set up using natural light

A little dull but works.

My not so helpful helpers, bless.

How to Photograph Greeting Cards Easily

There comes a time when you have to put down the pen or sewing needle and get down to the business of photographing your output. So armed with my new fancy Canon I set about getting it done as quickly as possible. I was going to do it outside but I decided any breeze would probably cause mayhem so into my very messy studio I went. One sweep of the arm to clear the table, one large sheet of white drawing paper and a bit of masking tape and my backdrop was set. Now the new camera is a lot heavier than my old (but very handy powershot D10) so I dusted off my tripod from college and set it up level with the display.

Using only natural light, I hate flash it just blasts details into oblivion I focused using the large screen viewfinder and shot a couple of images.

To save time I placed the circle ruler below so that my card would be placed in exactly the same spot. As I mentioned speed was key. I should add I removed the ruler after I placed the card in position.

And last but not least the finished shot. In order to get a perfect white background I had to take out the shadows and brighten the exposure a bit. The beauty is that because you take all the shots at the same time you can just batch change the whole lot in Photoshop relatively painlessly but even if you don't have it they can still look pretty good. All the images will eventually find their way online.