Although I’ve been focusing on people for most of my photography career, I also find myself occasionally tripping past other types of photography and looking in as I go by. One of those is product photography.
Product photography is an interesting area, since it looks so simple from the outside, and can be challenging to really get right. It’s not hard to take a picture of a widget. It’s much more demanding to take a picture of a widget and make it look both correct and appealing. Lighting has to be very particularly set up, and the needs of the customer can radically change the shot — is this a catalog shot? A marketing shot? What is the goal of the marketing campaign? The look for a bottle of hair product may or may not be utterly different from the look for a handgun. It’s hard to imagine lumping those products together, but I could easily imagine a lighting and background setup that would accommodate either.
My first attempt at a product shot demonstrated just how hard it is. I borrowed a decorative toy bird from a friend, since I wanted something whimsical, and my own possessions didn’t yield anything I’d want to call a portfolio shot of a whimsical thing. I shot it against a brightly colored background (boring), and against a colored background with glittering faux jewels strewn around (more interesting, but definitely not right). The lighting was ok, but the setting was just kind of bleh.
Then one morning I awoke to an inch or two of snow, and immediately knew the solution to my dilemma. I grabbed the bird, and perched him on a handy railing. Instantly, an interesting, evocative shot. Snow underneath, trees forming the out-of-focus backdrop; it was ideal.
Next up, I was approached about taking pictures for an Amazon web store. Amazon allows resellers to list their stuff through the Amazon site, as you probably know. But the product photography isn’t included, and the quality of images ranges from professional to abysmal. This request was for a nursery which sells bulbs that grow into lovely flowers, and we had some fresh-sprouted flowers to photograph. I had a camera with me, and the light was pretty nice, so I took some photos of the flowers in-place.
That’s a great picture, but it’s not really appropriate for selling a bulb on Amazon. That is to say, it would be a good marketing photo (where the message is, “Our flowers will add beauty to your home,” more or less). It’s not a good catalog photo. For a good catalog photo, you just want to see the product, without any distractions. It should allow the viewer to mentally swap in their own house or flowerbed with the minimum of work. The standard vocabulary for this is to have a white background.
The distinction between marketing and catalog shots is actually an interesting one, and one that I hadn’t really considered until taking these last two images. Both are good photos, but the difference between them is quite clear to me now that I’ve given it the thought.
Anyway, this is an interesting direction, and one I’d like to see happening more. There’s a temptation to say that this is a good way to generate revenue through photography, but I have a feeling that it’s also an interesting form of artistic expression in its own right, which I’ve only dipped a toe into so far.