Learnings from Shooting a Coffee Jar

Last week, me and my classmates at the Advanced Photography Sessions with Sir Jo Avila were taught how to shoot products like the coffee jar above. My first product shoot with all the flash setup and all!  Anyone can just shoot products just like that. As we have learned during the session, the challenge is to really make your shot stand out against a simple background or setup. There are really a lot of technical stuffs involved to shoot any product. Playing with light can be tough since you have to position the light in such a way that the elements to the product really stand out. Getting results like the picture above took us quite some time…hmm, actually a lot of time! Hahaha

We started studying the right position of how the jar was positioned with using only one main light source (the softbox on the picture). At first, the lightbox was positioned almost the same level as the jar itself and close to it so that the light will have a softer effect and make the coffee breans show. But then if someone would notice the setup on the picture above, the lightbox emits a strong hard light landing on the upper right part of the jar…an unwanted reflection. So how was that eliminated?

What was done was the softbox was directly positioned above the jar itself. It solved our need of showing the coffee beans within the jar. In order to show more of those coffee beans, what was done was that the two black cardboards (from the 2nd picture above) were flipped on their white sides towards the jar in order for them to serve as reflectors of light coming from the softbox.How the cardboards were positioned on the jar were obvious on the reflection on the jar, the picture could’ve been better by using reflectors or cardboards that can go all the way down and wrapping even the bottom part of the table.

Shooting stock images is not just about having a plain white background. One can simply add a dramatic background by doing a gobo just by blocking the light that goes to the background with a simple cardboard or even do some patterns on that cardboard. The effect can be soft (if the gobo is positioned near the light source) or hard (if it’s farther to the light source). Whichever goes, it’s all about taste when it comes to adjusting the gobo effect on shooting products. The one above is the softer version of what is a hard gobo effect on the bottom picture:

Images were shot using the kit lens. It makes one appreciate the worth of the stock lens, but then it can be cumbersome to use because you have to come closer to the product itself. It makes your shot prone to distortions than just having a telephoto lens and zoom on the product with no or minimal distortions. Hmmm… all the experience from our product photography session made me want to have my own studio flash setup and telephoto zoom lens.