Перевод "Reflections on Product Photography"

Reflections on Product Photography

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:

product-photography-1.jpg

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.