Johan Ronsse photography

Set up a little product photography studio last night, too bad I didn’t think of making a shot of the setup. Basically it was just a dark room, 1 flash mounted on a tripod with an umbrella (firing into the umbrella (white) and back, 1 big piece of white paper.

To make the room dark – I avoided any environmental light coming in so I covered the window in the room I shot the pictures in as much as possible with tape, paper, even a Quechua 2” tent. Anything I could find really.

Here’s the results.

Things learned:

• Get the products as clean as possible before shooting (I have to keep reminding myself to do this)
• Get the background as white as possible in-camera or you will have a lot of editing work (look at your histogram to figure out what you are seeing)
• This was an off-camera flash setup with a Cactus trigger, so there was no actual studio strobe involved. The camera couldn’t focus in darkness (and I couldn’t focus manually because it was too dark( so I had no choice to turn on the room lights which in turn messed up my white balance (had camera WB set to “Flash”). Fortunately white balance is easy to fix in Lightroom (using RAW files). A proper studio light has an extra light that goes off when you fire your camera.
• Glass (non-colored) is hard to edit since it has a slightly off-white color so hard to select in Photoshop
• Black objects are harder too, the solution here is to overexpose a bit to compensate

Special FX failures:

• I tried to mist the ferns with water to make the photo a bit more special but this is not obvious at all on the picture, I guess water droplets only make sense if you are doing close-up/macro.
• I tried making ice for a beer product shot but it didn’t really work out, the ice melted before I could even get it set up. Will need to read up on “fake” ice.

Product photography challenges ahead:

• Photograph on a black background
• Photograph on a grey background (or make white grey through lighting)
• Product photography with multiple flashes
• Find some interesting prop backgrounds too (wood, metal, etc.)

I always wondered how people took photos underwater, turns out what you need is an underwater housing for your camera (or a specific underwater camera). This can go from plastic bags to complicated systems in all price ranges, from €15 to over €1000.

I like the Craft & Vision books: they’re cheap ($5), you get a PDF so you can put it on your iPad, they’re short and to the point. I always learn at least a thing or two every book.

Don’t buy them through the iPad app since the PDF will be locked inside your iPad. What if you want to reference a book on another device later?

One gripe would be that you have to zoom in to comfortably read on the iPad (non retina). But I can live with that for the low price.

Here’s a mini-review of what I read so far:

• Up & Close, a good intro to macro photography and the various ways to do it (3.5/5)
• Exposure for Outdoor Photography – a book with mainly case studies on outside photography. Not so much to see here. Starts with an intro on the basics of photography, didn’t really expect that. (3/5)
• Making Light & Making Light 2 – a book about off-camera flash use, with good advice on gear, setup, and great photography results overall (4/5)
• MicroStock – From Passion to Paycheck, a book about stock photography (3/5) – a bit short and not so much to see again, the section on rejection is interesting

Besides that, I read the Scott Kelby books (OK-ish, learnt some things here). If you have any book recommendations ping me: goodreads@wolfslittlestore.be.

The 365 project has been going on for 100 days. I have posted 100 pictures to this blog and have been cross posting them to the photography section of my website.

I’m happy so far – I learned a lot in the past 100 days and like to think my photography evolved quite a bit.

I am contemplating about moving the photography to a separate business (running alongside Wolf’s Little Store, the design business), but first I will need to do more search, get more practice, gear and skills. That’s what the rest of the year is for.