Product Photography « Carissa Snedeker Photography

Our next assignment for our lighting class is to shoot a photo that could be submitted to Edible Reno-Tahoe magazine. The magazine “celebrates the local food culture, season by season.” Published quarterly, the magazine focuses on local restaurants, organic farms, bakeries, etc. I have a friend who is an amazing cook and is going into business with a friend of hers to produce savory preserves and confits under the label, Edible R&D. She has agreed to let me photograph her and her product for this project, so today I practiced one of my photo ideas so that I wouldn’t be fumbling around tomorrow. I grabbed a jar of apple butter from the fridge and got to work.

All photos were shot in our living room using diffused daylight from the large windows directly behind the camera. The idea with these shots was to focus on the product, yet have someone in the shot “pitching” the product so to speak, but not be the focus of the shot. Therefore, the person (in this case, me) is deliberately behind the focal plane of the product. I’ve included several photos to show where I went wrong as well as where I think I went right.

First I set up the product and made sure my camera was exposed properly:

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/50s © Carissa Snedeker

I then added myself to the picture, but you don’t get to see the early shots. Why? (A) no make-up, and (B) rumpled shirt. However, the shots sans make-up gave me important information, so I ran and changed my shirt and threw on some make-up and got down to it.

Posted in order taken. I like this one, even though the product isn’t straight, but I’m not too happy with how crunched my shoulder looks.

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/60s © Carissa Snedeker

This one…same shoulder crunch and my blouse is distorted on the right (showing the outline of my pacemaker).

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/60s © Carissa Snedeker

I really like this shot, and think it may be my favorite. For one thing, it obeys the rule of thirds (which one shouldn’t always get locked into, but should always be mindful of). My face is in the upper third of the photo and to the right, the apple butter pretty much in the middle third and by being to the left helps balance my face, with the foreground making up the bottom third of the picture.

This one is okay, but I’m not too crazy on how centered I am.

And finally, beware of the disembodied hand. Because I chose to drop my left arm from the portrait and the way I’m holding the jar with my right hand, it doesn’t look like the hand holding the jar even belongs to me. Huge mistake, but I wanted to post it. I’ve actually seen ads in magazines that have mistakes like this, but it is usually the result of Photoshop manipulation gone awry. This one is just a straight up photo boo-boo.