Product Photography Setup: How to Get Creative With What You’ve Got
It’s always exciting to get a new piece of gear or to work with a really elaborate setup. I really enjoy studio lighting photo shoots where I get to set up multiple lights and reflectors, put up a backdrop, and craft a scene exactly how I want it. Many beginner photographers would think you can’t create good lighting conditions without having lots of expensive equipment, but here I will tell you about a photo shoot I did on Christmas day, using only things I found laying around to create a miniature soccer stadium.
When I go home to see family, I don’t typically bring much camera equipment with me. I’ll usually bring my camera and a lens or two jut in case a good photo op arises and in this case, it did. Boxing day is a holiday originated in Great Britain and celebrated on the 26th of December which started as a day to give gifts to the poor. It also has another meaning when it comes to Premiere League soccer. 7 games are all played on the same day making boxing day a big day for soccer. This year, it was also the return of the Premiere League after its extended break for the World Cup.
In honor of this, I decided to set up a photo of these two miniatures of Harry Kane and Son Heung-min in anticipation for the early morning Tottenham Hotspur game. My parents are huge Tottenham fans and so of coarse they have figurines of their two star players.
I wanted to create a setup where the two figures looked like they were out on a mini field celebrating their victory. Here is where the lack of camera equipment became an issue. I did not have flashes, modifiers, light stands, reflectors, or a backdrop. All things I would have used for a shoot like this one. Instead I had to look around to find things that would work.
The first thing I needed to find was a good light source, or rather four good light sources. Stadiums typically have 4 lights at each corner of the field, evenly lighting everything and casting x-shaped shadows around each player. I wanted to try and recreate this by having 4 light sources at each corner of the set. For this I used 4 identical small desk lamps. I really lucked out that my parents decided to put the same lamp in every room rather than change things up! If I didn’t have access to identical lamps, I would have just needed to find 4 lights that are around the same temperature and would have needed to adjust their distance from the subjects to account for differences in brightness. Since I did not have a backdrop with me, I needed the lamps to be bright enough to drown out any ambient light and make the background appear black. This was done by simply positioning the lamps as close to the figures as I could without them appearing in the shot.
With the lighting done, next came the field. I spent a long time looking for a green blanket, or pillow, or article of clothing that could be used as the “field”. I even considered using sand and trying to color it green in post. Nothing was quite achieving the look I wanted. Since it was Christmas day, and we had opened presents earlier in the day, there were leftover present wrappings and I finally settled on a green piece of tissue paper to be used as the field. I also cut a thin strip of white tissue paper to make a line on the field in hopes it looked more believable.
I started taking pictures and felt something was missing to really convince you we were in a little stadium. That’s when I decided I needed a mini goal in the background. This part was actually relatively simple. I just cut out some white cardboard in to the correct shape, folded it so that it would stand up on its own, and posed it in the background. With all that done, here is what the setup looked like:
Once all of this was set up, taking the picture was relatively easy. I just had to make sure I wasn’t down too low that you could see the front edge pf the “field” and not too high up that I wasn’t eye level with the figures. Once I took the picture, all that was left was to edit the photo. For this I did a small amount of color correction, did some burning and dodging, added some haze, leveled the horizon and, most importantly, added some lights in the background to simulate camera flashes. Here is the before and after of the edits:
I had a lot of fun with this one. It really got the creative juices flowing! You don’t always need the expensive equipment to realize your vision. Look around and let the things you have inspire you. Understanding the basics of lighting and composition will be so much more useful than expensive equipment when creating your photos.
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William Weeks
1474 S Acoma St, Denver, CO 80223
719-640-7438