Some product photography

Saturday morning I went round to a friends to take some shots of pottery for their web site, I decided to shoot against a black cloth with a sheet of glass as a base.

I used two Canon speed lights (master, slave) one on the camera and one setup on my tripod and set at -2/3 stops.

I'm pleased with the majority of shots, but a few I would have done differently having seen them.

Here is one below, the rest of the gallery is HERE



Any thoughts good or bad, gratefully received

Most images look okay Ken....Glossy pottery not the easiest thing to photograph, especially when it comes flash reflection as is shown in image above. Would it of been better to use natural light say coming through a window when imaging the more glossy pots?? I am definitely far from being an expert in this type of photography but using natural light may be something i would of tried

Interesting stuff Ken.

Karen (my wife) is nagging me to do something similar for some of the bags & purses that she's recently started making / selling.

PS

Had a look and love the pottery by the way.

Hi Mark

Thanks for looking through the shots. Unfortunately there was no way of photographing them outside, I kind of wanted the different textures and finishes to show, so to some extent the catch light reflections help, but on some they are a bit OTT. I couldn't even bounce as the room was brown timber inside .

I think I will buy a white brolly at some stage, this will help to soften the light.

Hey Phil,

I appreciate you looking, perhaps you could get one of those white tent things for shooting Karen's bags/purses. I quite like the black BG it seems to bring out things a bit better, but I guess it no good for photographing dark things.

Good luck with it though Phil, look forward to seeing some test shots if you do any.

There were no windows in the room Ken?? If that was the case and the fact of the timber inside this created somewhat of a photographers nightmare when it comes to getting the lighting spot on.
More importantly Ken, did your friend like the photos that you took?? We can sometimes be too critical with our own images as we always want them to be perfect. But its the old adage, what may look bad to us can look good to somebody else.

Hi Mark

No, there were no windows at all, just some poor fluorescent lighting

Yes the two guys who pottery it was were delighted with the finished results, so a success really, but as you say, you kind of know there are little things you would do differently after loading them onto the PC back at home and looking closely at them

Hi Ken I think you did a nice job in such difficult surroundings, I had a nightmare yesterday doing a family christening with different lights in all buildings etc not my stuff to be honest. Only thing I could suggest is to maybe diffuse the light a little more, I'm making another diffuser today to fasten onto my external flash using a large plastic milk bottle lined with tin foil my last one worked quite well and I can even shape it to bounce the light a little better.. Waffle over mate

Kens gone potty hahaha
I love the on black look and think they are really good
my wife loves one of the pots and would like to know an average price
is there a web site she can look at ?

Not waffle at all Owen, I quite like the milk container idea (did you mean the tetra pack containers).

Thanks for looking through them Owen

I've been potty for a long time Cakey

I believe all of the stuff has been made to sell and this shoot was so they can make a web site to promote there pottery.

If you like, I can make a tentative enquiry as to price, just PM which picture (right click to get file number)

336666 Ken cheers ..............