Boom! Marketing

A Case Study

THE COMPOSITION

Caroline from Boom! Marketing got in touch, they were launching a range of PPE gear and wanted some product photography shots taken asap. Could I oblige?..no problem!

THE PHOTOSHOOT

The time constraints on this shoot weren't an issue. Business, as everyone knew at this stage, had gone very quiet for most so I was only too happy to get this call from Caroline. We had collaborated together on a couple of projects before so I was delighted for us to work together again. I packed up the lights and all my gear and headed off to the location but it soon became apparent that the first issue I would have would be space closely followed by light. Space was of a premium so we had to delicately negotiate all my equipment, taking great care not to step on anything valuable or on any of the products themselves of course. I had brought my backdrop with me but the issue was that its 8ft wide which is too big for many locations including this one.

celtic photography

This 8ft wide background needs plenty of room to breathe!

Fortunately the roll of paper was nearing the end of its useful life so I cut it in two which ensured it fit neatly at one end of the room. The next issue was lighting, I had my studio lights which again needed delicate handling. In such a small space, light bounce is unforgiving and to compound matters, I was shooting Perspex screens amongst other stuff so reflections were also an issue. I heard this quote in a recent webinar, "keep your eyes on the prize not the obstacles" and this was very applicable in this case! With careful consideration of angles etc I managed to capture the screens without too much in the way of reflections. A little work was done in Photoshop to brighten the background so the screens stood out.

celtic photography

The rest of the products were fairly straightforward until I got to the stand which was too big to fit on the background, I couldn't get a sufficient distance away to get the whole thing in so ended up shooting two images and merging them together in post-production. That's the beauty of this job, sometimes you have to think on your feet to get the job done. The purists might argue that it's not the correct way to do things but if the client is happy with the end result that's all that matters to me.

Patterned wallpaper + finite length of backdrop + very tall piece of equipment = Photographer hair loss

The last bit we needed to do was grab a couple of lifestyle images covering the types of use for the perspex screen. Once again a lot of manoeuvring of equipment, people and...ahem...furniture and we quickly grabbed the shots that were needed. All in all a satisfying days work.

RESULTS FROM THE DARKROOM

The images and all these products can be viewed at the following website. Thanks to Caroline for allowing me to use her assignment as a case study.