San Diego Product Photography: Selected Work and How Each Shot Was Made

I’ve been shooting product photography in San Diego since 2013, from my studio in Vista and on location across the county. Some of it is high-gloss campaign work, some of it is clean e-commerce catalogs shot a couple hundred SKUs at a time, and some of it is stranger than that. This is a selection, with a note on how each shot was made, because with product photography the lighting really is the product.

The printer that went to space

This was an interesting one. HP asked me to photograph a printer bound for the International Space Station, specially designed to work in zero gravity, on a tight timeline and at their office. Usually when I shoot for a client this size there is an agency involved and a lot of eyeballs on set, but this was just “come shoot it,” in a hurry. When my assistant and I arrived, we had the ultimate studio: a dark and cramped conference room. Luckily I had plenty of experience by then shooting composites and piecing images together from separate plates of different elements. We didn’t have room to dial in the lighting the way we would have liked, but we made them happy by combining our best frames.

As you can tell from the process shots, the tray had a simple sandblasted finish that contrasted nicely with the high-gloss traditional surfaces. These were press shots, since the unit was never going to be sold to the public. A camera is truly a passport to seeing interesting things, and this is one of those things you remember in a career.

Razer

I photographed this project with Mth Degree and my friend Thierry at Ockham. Their crew is great, and we basically shadowed them, replicating their video lighting as closely as we could with strobes, or sometimes capturing their lighting setup before they moved on to the next scene. This one was more of a product and use-case scenario. The agency concepted a college rock band, Sumo Rocket, promoting themselves with the Razer laptop for design work, a young photographer using it to process images, and a drone designer pitching a prospect with 3D CAD. I learned a lot about designing sets, building lifestyle and use-case product shots, and handling a full day of photography and videography together, seamlessly.

Bambu

Bambu has always asked for more creative skincare shots, and that can be time consuming. This is where the toys come out: trays for sloshing water around, a clear fish tank, colorful seamless backdrops.

Biotech: Codex DNA and Bionano

Codex DNA, now Telesis Bio, made a beast of a device: the BioXp, a benchtop “DNA printer” for synthesizing genes and other genetic material, well beyond my scientific understanding. It also needed to be photographed in a conference room, since it was prohibitively expensive and heavy to bring to my studio. We adapted again, shooting composites of different zones on the unit, with separate frames for the illuminated interiors and screens that never balance exposure-wise in camera. The whole thing had to be penned out in Photoshop later and the background replaced with white. Each variation in angle or concept can be a lot of setup, so I like to have a solid shot list before committing to a timeline and budget.

You don’t see too many electronics or biotech devices shot with a funky wide angle like this, but the Bionano Saphyr has become one of my more frequently mentioned shots among new and prospective clients. The low, foreshortened perspective gave the product a heroic, dynamic look and made it more interesting than your typical informational product shot. It was a 24mm lens, also shot at the client location, and I have brought that look to many products since. I have photographed for Bionano since 2014, one of a handful of biotech clients I have worked with for over a decade.

Beverage

Beverage shots always take a lot of care and patience. For beer I use glycerin drops that hold up under time and bright lighting, and I often re-pour the head many times over. Bottle shots are usually composited from separate frames while the camera stays fixed on a stand in the studio. In the whiskey here, acrylic ice keeps the liquid clear of any cloudiness or strange-looking streams. Color is a big factor: I play with light and diffusion until I get the right opacity and that deep caramel. These pair with my tutorials on beer lighting and photographing glass bottles, if you want to see how the sausage is made.

Skincare and consumer goods

dogface skincare was, interestingly, launched by the creator of the Shake Weight, Johann Verheem. We had some fun conversation about the whole Shake Weight phenomenon and everything that went into it. They actually had a live-above, shoot-below studio of their own and built a bathroom set, and we photographed models shaving in the shower that day too. I have since built a modern tile luxury shower in my studio, so I can do this kind of thing in house now as well.

Jonathan Cate has been an e-commerce eyewear client of mine for years, though he didn’t ask me for hero shots until more recently. The first of these was in my studio, suspending the sunglasses on thin wire and moving diffusion material and gridded lights around to build the gradients. The second used a similar technique but on seamless paper, to mimic the look of a leading eyewear trade magazine he advertises in. The stacked glasses were my idea, and I really enjoy how that one turned out. They can be held in place with museum wax or orthodontic wax, a trick of the trade.

Gordon Rush is a family-owned footwear company, founded by brothers Kevin and Alan Gordon, whose parent group also revived Hood, a shoe brand that dated back to the early 1900s. At first our work together was all creative and hero shots, and then we moved into large e-commerce batches. I learned a lot about digital asset management, and about fashion, in my shoe-photographer years. I still have a pair of their chukka boots too.

Doc Sweeney Drums has since relocated, but they were one of my favorite clients. Steve, the owner, would come in with all manner of exotic woods and hand-painted instruments, and as a musician myself I always found it fascinating to photograph. He builds some very unique concepts, including his trademarked HolloCore snare, whose shell is turned from a single solid block of wood and then hollowed out, rather than built from bent plies.

One for myself

This is an image I made strictly for my own enjoyment, using acrylic inks and a fish-tank immersion. The bottle was photographed both dry, for perfect lighting, and underwater, to sit inside the clouds of ink dropped into the tank. Each cloud has to be choreographed and then composited into the right spot with the other frames. It was an invaluable technical exercise and a portfolio piece, though clients rarely ask for this kind of treatment.

Michael Walker knife

My longtime friend Dave Ellis, knife purveyor, maker, and collector at exquisiteknives.com, not only taught me how to forge and make custom knives, he has also hired me for photography and more over the years. Michael Walker was the father of the modern linerlock and has patented over twenty folding-knife mechanisms, and his knives have been known to fetch six figures on the collector market and at auction. This is two frames of the same knife, combined to show it open and closed. The angle is different from what other knife photographers are doing, which is why I chose it, shot on black plexiglass in my studio. I am a huge fan of this piece and its intricate machining. I also wrote a full knife photography tutorial showing the exact setup I use for blades. It is too expensive to carry, though, so it will likely remain in Dave’s safe, to be admired for years to come.

On white

And sometimes the job is simply a clean product on a white background, done right and done consistently at volume. If you want the how-to, I wrote up my white seamless studio setup.

If you have a product that deserves better photos, take a look at my San Diego product photography and get in touch.