During the module we had the opportunity to sit in with photographer Richy Leeson.
Though learning a lot from the workshop one thing that stood out to me was hearing Richy talk business after education.
Richy mentioned e-commerce as being an excellent source of income and I was surprised to realise I had never really thought about the topic as a genre of photography.
E-commerce is essentially any transaction over internet. Typically a product/service being purchased for money. When we shop online, without really thinking about it we see pictures of the product, typically on a white background. The goal is not necessarily to sell the product but to show an accurate representation of what the product is and does.
Obviously, someone has had to take that photograph, deciding on composition, lighting and angles. Leeson brought this is my attention and stated typically practice consists of being paid a predetermined amount for every image.
For this shoot I used a 'product tent'.
A product tent is essentially a cube frame wrapped in a diffusion material. Sometimes, with different inserts for backgrounds.
The backgrounds served the purpose of avoiding photographing white on white helping to separate from the background.
I lit the product tent be pointing 3 softboxes (to soften the light further) into the left, right and top of the tent. This was to created ensure every part of the product.
ISO 100 f/13 1/200sec 105mm
By angling the side softboxes I was able to light the background evenly also.
As the tent will be reflecting light from all 3 light all around the inside, I thought building 1 light at a time would be impractical as I wanted a simple flat lighting.
I turned on the lights, set to the same value at the same distance and metered from the center of the lens with the infercone pointing towards the lens.
Due to the angle of the lights, there are enough shadows cast to show clear detail,depth and form .
However, the same intensity of light on the sides doesn't quite read the very front of the lens, due to the cylindrical shape.
I could have solved this problem by moving the lens furter back into where the light was being aimed however carelessness meant I didn't stop the problem on the day, partly due to shooting untethered and the built-in screen not being the best to evalute images.
The nature of ecommerce photography means different angles of the product is shown, as this product is second hand, this is also important to show and highlight the condition of the item.
With lenses, the condition of the glass is a very important factor.
the issue I had with this shot is the transparency of the glass. It shows the condition of the internal elements, which is good, however the front glass element, bar some flaring and dust specks, is too transparent to show the actual condition due to the light just passing through.
To solve this problem, I moved the lens so the angle of incidence of the light would bounce back into the lens showing the reflection coming off the lens.
This angle also allows you to see the depth and form of the lens as the head on angle gave a very two-dimensional look to the image.
Final Set of Images
Angle of incidence
Put simply, the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflectance; the angle that the lights hits a surface (incidence) is the angle the light is reflected of the surface (reflectance).
This is useful to know when you want to catch highlights such as the example above or avoid highlights such as photographing people with glasses.
