this almost just in

I wanted to take at least a second and report that I’ve successfully completed my first product shoot.  I’ve been working with Fontis, a great local bottled water company, for a month or two on and off now to provide them with some new product shots for their revamped website.  Admittedly, shooting products on white was a learning process for me, and, well, fixing my mistakes in Photoshop afterwards was also a bit of a learning process…or maybe a reflection that I just need to learn some more:

That was one of the “before” images.  I lit them with my Speedotron Blackline system (a recent acquisition from my dad; obviously I’m still learning) with three lights total powered by an 805 pack:  a small softbox about 45 degrees camera left for the key and a medium softbox at about the opposite angle camera right, along with the third strobe on the backround through my largest softbox, about a 24×48 incher.  The background itself isn’t seamless white paper (didn’t have any of this at the time) but rather a very large white sheet that will probably find better use as a silk from now on.  I call this/these “before” images, as in before I had to go back in and draw clipping paths around the products in every photo to knock out the background to get a pure white, like this:

Maybe if I’d read Zack Arias’s excellent tutorial about lighting against a white background before the shoot this would have all gone more smoothly.  Even though the cut-out versions worked pretty well, there’s no kind of cool shadow or reflection as in Zack’s examples.  But hey, Fontis was happy and I got some new experience out of it; can’t wait to give it my next go!