Product Photography/Still Life Archives

Faygo bottle professional beverage photo.

How to Photograph a Glass Bottle

The Shot If you've ever attempted to photograph glass bottles, especially transparent ones, you probably know a few cuss words. Today we're covering commercial beverage photography camera settings, lighting setup, and styling—plus common mistakes to avoid. Camera Settings For most bottles, I am using a focal length of 100mm (on a 100mm macro lens). It tends to introduce less distortion and foreshortening of a bottle and we want things nice and straight and level. The longer focal length also helps…

Camera Settings for Product Photography

If you're new to product photography work, its a whole different game than portrait and lifestyle, with its own set of camera settings, lighting techniques, tools and methodology. Lets dive in and look at some of the fundamentals! Camera Settings PREFACE: Before getting to camera settings it is MUY IMPORTANTE to tell you that you should always shoot products from a tripod or camera stand. This way you can use whatever shutter speed you want and not worry about shake/blur.…

Food Photography Lighting Setup: Burger

Lighting Setup I'm often asked for my "go to" food photography lighting setup. There is no single setup that's going to work for all food, but there are some general rules. Today we will focus on a cheeseburger lighting setup and talk a bit about why it works for a shot like the above. This is an in-restaurant shot done in a short time on a modest budget without a professional food stylist, the marketing team at Burger Lounge styled…

Shooting Still Photo and Video Together

Flex alert here, guys. I shot Drew Brees recently, alongside a video crew in San Diego. Drew was a laid back, accommodating dude with a generally great attitude towards the whole crew. It was a high level day on my fun-o-meter.Enough about me. Today we set out to answer the question: Can we shoot video and photo simultaneously on the same day? Should we do that? After all, the talent is there, lighting is there, a hair and makeup artist,…

Shot Lists for Photoshoots: What, Why, How

One of the first questions I ask a new potential client is "Do you have a shot list?" I'm happy to work with them either way but it helps me gauge how much they may have thought about the details and logistics of their shoot. Generally, when clients come to me with a list of shots, it means they've done some prep work, have a good idea of their brand identity (or brand identity they aspire to), and may already…

Photographing a Golf Club – Lighting Setup / BTS

Something from the #protip category today. I had an opportunity to photograph some golf clubs (putters) for Ashdon Golf this morning and discovered the Manfrotto Putter Holder (aka Justin Clamp). It's intended to hold a small flash, maybe an umbrella and/or other items, but its rubber bushings work great for holding the shaft of a golf club. As you can see its pretty easy to get a consistent club angle like this as well. This setup allowed for astonishingly low cuss rates…

Carlsbad Lifestyle/Brand Narrative Photography

With social media outlets representing a big chunk of brands advertising these days, there's a need for nimble, quick lifestyle photography on mid sized budgets. My friends at Wonderful Machine have even coined a new genre for their listings called "brand narrative." Photographers in this category are known to produce a series of lifestyle images to tell the story of a brand rather than the one or two "hero" shots of a more traditional ad campaign. Capturing a large amount…

Beer Photography – Lighting Setup and Technique

Product photography, and especially beverage photography involving glass, is a true melding of technical geekery and artistic decision making. Although the challenges of photographing glassware and liquid can be at times frustrating, the rewards are high. It's the feeling of building an image, as if building a piece of furniture. You look at examples, lay out a design, start to assemble the parts, and then you invariably will stray from that design in actual practice which produces something unique. I…