Digital Photography Guide

I’ve been a fan of photographer Joachim “Kim” Guanzon for sometime. He’s one of those photographers that has a bag of tricks that is as deep as a canyon, always leaving me with the “how did he do that” feeling.

I recently saw some of his product photography work and decided to get the answers straight from the source. The technique in question this time around is “How do you shoot highly reflective objects?” For those experienced with studio lighting, you know this is not an easy thing to do. If you do it wrong it’s like holding up a magnifying glass to an acne-ridden teen’s face. Ok that’s a bit graphic. But, if you get it right, it can be as smooth as… something really smooth.

To start us off lets show an example. Here is a shot of stainless steel he did for a client:

Ok, did you really LOOK at the photograph? See if you can break down the lighting before he gives it away. Hint: Where is the light coming from, where does the light go, and what is the quality of the light he is using. Let’s pick his brain and see if we can get some straight answers.

Q: What got you into product photography?

Kim: I started photography back in 2003 when I read about Lomography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomography) at boingboing.com. At this point I was just shooting casually (mostly with my camera phone) and publishing stuff to flickr. When I moved to Utah my curiosity with Lomography peaked when I happened stumble upon an open box Lomo LCA kit from a used furniture store (yeah, of all the places!). So with my first vintage camera I began playing around with film photography while the rest of the world was going digital. I found myself going back in time, collecting vintage cameras from TLR’s to German “Robot” spy cameras. Eventually I got tired of scanning film, cleaning up dust from scans. I bit the bullet and got a Canon 20D, and from there I gradually accumulated professional camera gear and studio equipment.

I got my big break into product photography back in 2007 when I was asked to take some product shots for XanGo. Since then I have been building my portfolio which includes work doing food photography, product photography, editorial, executive and even the occasional wedding photography.

Q: What are the most challenging products to shoot?

Kim: One difficult subject to shoot we all deal with everyday is stainless steel (or pretty much anything similarly reflective). My solution is always to think up of ways to get the right reflections back from the subject and avoid any undesirable reflections (this includes seeing the camera & photographer in the reflections).

Q: Is your technique something you learned from others, or one you arrived at through trial and error?

Kim: My technique has mostly been countless hours of trial and error as well as reading a lot of lighting cookbooks, lighting blogs and product packaging blogs like The Dieline. I look at a lot of product photography online and try to decipher what tools were used to create the final shot. Most of the time you can see through the reflections what light modifiers were used to create the shot.

For example, let’s take a look at a shot that I tried to dissect from The Dieline website.

I can tell that they used a long vertical diffusion panel camera left lit by a very large stripbox with eggcrates. There is also a large white card coming from camera right to add fill.

Q: Impressive. What are stripboxes? Sounds kinky.

Kim: Stripboxes are long softboxes that create a strip of light. I use them quite a lot with bottle shots. Here’s a similar shot that I took with the same technique and a couple stripboxes:

If you notice the thin reflections running along the edges of the bottles, that’s coming from a stripbox. I placed the stripboxes behind the subject and a little of the stripbox goes below the plexiglass to create a seamless catchlight. Check the diagram below to get an overview of the setup:

Q: Ok, walk us through the studio setup. Sounds like lighting is the most important consideration. Where do you set up your lights and what kind of lights do we need?

Kim: My gear consists of an assortment of monoblock strobes, varying sizes of softboxes, beautydishes, century stands, regular lightstands, booms, grips, diffusion panels, white formica for nonreflected shots, colored plexiglass for reflected shots, sawhorses, etc. I know it sounds intimidating, but that being said, all those are just tools to manipulate light. Once you understand the basic science behind how light works, you can use that understanding and apply it to your shots. I highly recommend reading the book “Light: Science & Magic” by Fil Hunter and Paul Fuqua. That book is pretty much my lighting handbook. You can learn everything from “the family of angles” to dark/bright field lighting.

Q: Do you have a particular preference in how you trigger your off camera strobes?

Kim: I use a combination of Pocket Wizards and optical slaves (only in the studio). Pocket Wizards have been the industry standard and I have never had a misfire since I started using them.

Q: Looking at the sample shots, how did you get the light to fill the inside of the steel cups?

Kim: It’s crazy that you mentioned that. Honestly I didn’t even think about lighting the insides of the cups because they were too small to make a problem. Basically, these cups were shot individually and then I composited them to create the group shot that I submitted to the client. I lit each cup with the exact same lighting shown in the diagram below:

Q: Is getting started with product photography going to break the bank? What are the bare essentials?

Kim: A barebones setup would be a cheap light tent big enough to fit your products, a couple strobes, and materials to control the spread and spill of the lights (flags, gridspots, gobo’s). I’ve seen a lot of these modifiers built using DIY methods and are documented at different websites online. Fortunately time is not as expensive as camera gear so be creative and you’ll be surprised at the results you can get.

Q: Ok, last question. How many hours of Photoshopping does it require to arrive at the final image?

Kim: Most of my clients request photos in white backgrounds. Luckily for me this makes editing easier and only takes me a few minutes to clean up and deliver the final files. More complicated files that require compositing can take up to 4 hours to edit.

Hopefully this article helps you better understand all the work that goes into seemingly simple photographs you see when flipping through your favorite catalogue. It’s inspiring to see he started with limited photographic skills and was able to excel a relatively short time. If you’d like to see more of his work, his site is www.kimguanzon.com and his flicker photos are here http://www.flickr.com/photos/jowchie.

Tags: Product Photography

I once saw a video, where a pro-photographer used professional studio lighting and mirrors to light a subject, and it inspired me to try and achieve the same result using only ‘amateur light’

After a visit to the DYI store and Toys R’Us, I had what I needed; 4 pieces of 15 x 15 cm (5,5 x 5,5 inches) mirrors and a model car. Call me a petrol-head, but I couldn’t help but worrying which car to buy based on what I’d most like to own full-scale… In the end I decided on a scale 1:24 Maserati GranTurismo

My ‘household light’ is an old 20 AUD IKEA floor lamp with a 60 watts tungsten bulb. I wanted to use only one light source, as household bulbs almost inevitably gives different color hues depending on manufacturer and age of the bulb.

My aim was to use the mirrors to reflect light onto the car, in order to make shape, form and curves more noticeable than if I had just flooded the whole car with light.

My first set-up was like this:

This lit the car from the side, at about 45 degrees above. The first shot using only the floor lamp and no mirrors produced this effect:

There’s a nice Z-shaped shadow across the hood, but otherwise it was clear that this set-up didn’t work. Take a look at the car - there aren’t any sign of curves or lines along the side of the car or around the wheel arches.

The light is too strong and too direct to show any tones in the reflected light. This creates an even surface lacking any depth perspective. A lot like the effect from direct sunlight at the middle of the day, actually.

More importantly, with the light coming from the same side of the car I had my camera positioned, I was unable to use the mirrors to reflect light onto the car. It had to be re-arranged!

My second set-up looks like this

Here I have the lamp directly behind the car, about 60 degrees above.

Here’s the beginning - car lit only with the lamp:

Not surprisingly, the car is underexposed on the side I’m photographing (which is what I want it to be at this stage). There a highlight (where door meets roof). I guess it could have been solved by using a more diffused light such as a white cloth in front of the lamp.

The first mirror I placed (marked 1 on the photo above) reflects light on the front of the car:

The aim is to light the front and more specifically, to get reflections in the headlight.

The next mirror (marked “2″) reflects light onto the side of the car:

and creates reflections in the wheels (particularly the front) and enhances the shape and form of the front wheel arch as well as the longitudinal crease on the door and down to the rear wheel arch.

The third mirror (yep, marked “3″)

is reflecting light onto the rear wheel and enhances the line from the roof onto the trunk.

The last mirror (no. “4″) is reflecting light onto the front and into the cabin.

Having used all four mirrors I was out of options, but I don’t think more mirrors would have made a difference anyway.

Here’s how the car looks without mirrored light and with mirrored light (click to enlarge):

With just a household lamp and four mirrors I have created a studio-like lighting of the model car!

Had my mission been to sell the model car on ebay or another internet auction site, I’m confident that the final result would have attracted more potential customers, and thus a higher selling price.

Even if I’m not selling the model car (I’ll sell it when I can replace it with one in scale 1:1), I have still had fun playing with light. Knowledge of light is the basics of photography, so it will undoubtedly benefit me at a later stage. And, who knows, I might even have inspired you to try something similar - playing and learning?

Tech-talk:
Photos are taken with a Nikon D300 and 50 f/1.8 lens. All photos are shot at f/14 and approx 1 second exposure at ISO 320. White balance was set to auto which created a yellow hue. I could have recorded a manual white balance, but as I shot in RAW I adjusted the white balance in Nikon Capture NX.

The photos are reduced in size, added some sharpness and converted to jpg. Otherwise no post processing.

Is there anything I would have differently?
I later noticed that the car looked cooler in the first set-up (seen more from the front). I’ll keep that in mind for next time. Also, next time I’ll consider a dark non-reflective surface and backdrop. That should give me more fine-tuning possibilities, as there will be much less reflected light from the tabletop. Furthermore it will allow the car to stand out more from the background.

Did I stop there?
Nah, I had to try to turn the mirrors around, like this:

A rather different way of using the mirrors, which creates this result:

This set-up is lit with a softbox, and note how form and curves are less distinct than when using the mirrors. It clearly shows the difference the mirrors can do when used for reflecting light.

I’d love comments and suggestions - or even challenges - regarding the next subject to light with household light and mirrors…

Tags: lighting, Mirrors

A couple of weeks ago I came across a great online digital photography project by the name of We’re All Gonna Die - 100 meters of Existence by Simon Hoegsberg.

The image in the project is 100 meters long, contains portraits of 178 people and…. well its an image that needs to be seen to really appreciated. I spent a good 15-20 minutes looking at it on my first viewing. It’s not something that loads particularly past if you’re on a slow internet connection - but if you’re able - it’s worth a look.

After looking over the image I shot the photographer Simon Hoegsberg an email and asked if he’d mind answering a few questions. He agreed and below is our short interview.

Darren: “We’re All Gonna Die - 100 meters of Existence” - where did the name come from?

Simon: The title of the photograph: “We’re All Gonna Die - 100 meters of existence” is not meant to spread fear as some people may believe - on the contrary, it’s meant to point out that life is beautiful, and unless we open up to each other instead of keeping our longings, hopes and experiences to ourselves we’ll fall into the grave with a lot of valuable information and love that we never got around to sharing with the people we’re in touch with. I believe that it is meaningful to let the thought that we’re going to die into our heads once in a while because it brings into perspective what we’re actually doing with the life we’ve been given.

Darren: What gear did you use in shooting for this project? (camera, lens etc)

Simon: The camera I used for the project is a Canon 1D Mark II, and the lens a Canon 400mm. The software is Photoshop.

Darren: Can you talk us through the logistics of the image? How many images are in it? How many did you shoot that are not in it? How did you stitch it together?

Simon: There are 178 portraits of people in the image - chosen from a selection of about 3000. The location where I shot the portraits was a railway bridge on Warschauer Strasse in Berlin, and the time: two hours of shooting a day over 20 days (only two hours because the light falling onto the people I was photographing had to come from the same angle so that it would look as if every person copy/pasted into the final picture was actually present in the moment and on the location that the long photograph depicts).

Darren: What reactions have you been getting from people about the image?

Simon: The reactions from people who’ve seen the image have been surprisingly positive. I have been and am delighted to receive so many emails from people around the world who’ve seen the photograph, and who have decided to write me to let me know that my work has had an impact on them. Reading all these mails has been sort of a mesmerizing process in that I’m not used to being praised in this scale.

Darren: Are you displaying the image (or do you intend to display it) anywhere except online?

Simon: Currently I’m in the process of preparing to exhibit the 100 meter photograph in its full length (100 m x 78 cm) in a public square in Copenhagen in the month of May 2009.

Darren: You’ve displayed a number of projects on your site - what’s next for you?

Simon: I’m not sure what kind of project I will throw myself into in the near future. But I wouldn’t be surprised if in the coming weeks I’ll be very receptive to all sorts of small impressions which - I’m sure - I will gladly invite inside and let myself be influenced by. In any case, I’ll have to await the moment where a thought strikes me hard and I realize: yes!!! This is what I must do! That’s mostly how I’ve previously “fallen” into new projects.

Tags: Interview, Simon Hoegsberg

In this post Lyndzee Ellsworth (see their blog at epblog.net) shares some images from a shoot to show what impact shutter speed can have on images.

Do you ever get confused with all of the different functions on your digital camera? What about at night? Don’t worry you’re not alone. In this post I show you how experimenting with shutter speed impacted taking a shot of Downtown San Diego at night.

I’ve got four photographs of Downtown San Diego and have varied the shutter speed on each so that the shutter stays open a little less each time. I kept the ISO at 100 to keep the noise level at a minimum, which is crucial in night photography to allow the optimal amount of color and darkness at the same time. I kept the aperture at F/5 through all of the photos because at F/5 your lens is still wide open enough to get a good amount of natural light.

Starting with the first photo, I set the shutter speed for a 15 sec exposure (which on your camera should look like 15”). With the shutter open for 15 seconds, all of the light that the lens can capture in that 15 seconds is recorded and processed. By the photo below you can tell that 15 seconds was too much, so I changed it to 10, then 8 and then finally landed on 5 seconds to achieve what in my eye was the best shot.

These differences were achievable by only changing the shutter speed. Please look further on the DPS archives for more understanding of aperture, ISO and shutter speed to see how these elements work together.

See more of Lyndzee’s blogging at her blog - epblog.net.

DISCOVER how to take these kinds of Long Exposure Images:

• Slow Shutter Shoot Out - 3 Slow Shutter Speed Techinques
• How to Shoot Light Trails
• A Beginners Guide to Capturing Motion in Your Photography
• How to Capture Motion Blur in Photography

Tags: Long Exposure, Slow Shutter Speed