March 2009 Archives

Great product photography will increase sales, establish creditability, and position your product ahead of the competition. Whether you want to transform your web site, produce new brochures or catalogs, or just personalize your office walls, stunning product photography will add professionalism to all your marketing efforts. Clean crisp images capture attention, generate awareness, and create a desire for your products.

Photographing products not only requires the proper equipment, but the artistic and technical skill to use camera and lighting components effectively. Experience with a wide variety of subjects, backgrounds, and lighting techniques can be a real plus when it comes to choosing a photographer. Here at Photographic Solutions we have over 50 years of combined experience shooting all kinds of products. Each subject has unique features that may benefit from different approaches. The idea is to produce an image that will inspire the confidence of your customers and your sales force.

It's the little things that count, and product photography is an exercise in attention to the details. When preparing products for a photo shoot, always make sure that they are in the best condition possible. Labels need to be straight, centered properly on the product, and not scratched or damaged. Lids, logos, and silk screened text also need to be centered and level. If boxes are involved, make sure there are no dings or dents that will catch the light and will be time consuming to fix in post production. Not all products that come off the assembly line are suitable for photography. Although the digital age has certainly simplified many things, or, should I say, made many things possible that were previously very difficult, or cost prohibitive; not all problems can be fixed with Photoshop. That said, we can do amazing things with the computer and several specialty programs. Photoshop, of course, is on the top of the list when it comes to enhancing and preparing the final images.

We always suggest that product shoots be preceded with a planning session between the client and photographer, where we can work out all the particulars. Backgrounds, props, lighting, angles, formatting, special effects, end use, creating a feeling or emotion, can all be important considerations. Even if you just need a photo of your product floating on a white background, there are things to consider and several ways to accomplish the goal.

Don't take chances with your image, get some great shots! We can help.

When people see our aerial photography, they often say "Wow, I wish I had something like this of my place". Many times, after this initial reaction, people ask us to shoot their finished properties without

planning and preparing the property. As aerial photographers, we will sometimes spend a week just planning a shoot to ensure that we get it right. Weather is a huge factor for us, but beyond that, we look at time of day, the location of the property and its surroundings, and often the time of year. For some sites, we have to receive specific permission to fly over and shoot, which often increases our planning time. So, aside from the planning we do for each flight, what can you do?

Depending on where your property is, the season when the photography is done can make a big difference. For example, if you have a cabin in a place like Sundance or Park City, you may want to have photos taken at different times of the year. In the Winter, the property will likely be covered in snow and have that "Christmas card" look. The same property in late Spring or early Summer will also look great with green trees and grass on the ground and snow-capped mountains in the background. Ingeneral, consider where your property is and in what season or seasons it looks the best, and plan to have the photography done then.

Photoshop allows us many liberties and enables us to "clean up" some distractions in the picture. In general, however, it is best to make sure your site is the way you want it to look when we go up to photograph it. Do you have a stack of pipes or pallets in your parking lot that you don't want to be seen? Is the pool going to be covered or will there be maintenance crews working that day? These are often things that only you know and can take care of. Once we have our flight planned, we depend on you to let us know if that plan is workable or if we need to move to a different day or time.

By planning to have everything ready when we go up to shoot, the process is a better experience for everyone involved. When everything is ready and we are able to get the shots you need, the finished files or display prints can be turned around in little time. With our quick turnaround and award winning technique, your aerial photographs will be adding value to your property in no time!

Flip through any interior design magazine and you'll see pages and pages of interior architectural photographs. Which ones do you like? Which images don't you like? Chances are that the rooms in those photographs are fairly comparable from a design and build standpoint. You might not know it from the magazine, but if you actually walked into a room from a picture you didn't like it would probably be quite beautiful. But when someone sees a poorly composed or lit picture in a magazine, they ask, "Who built that room? I don't like it." or, "Whoever designed that space didn't know what they were doing!" A great architectural photographer's job is to make sure that whoever sees that photograph sees the space that you created in it's best light and form.

There can be a lot of work that goes into a successful interior shoot. It's always a good idea to talk to the photographer before hand and if possible meet at the location to discuss timing and strategy. Shooting the interior of a finished, decorated home is different than shooting a large commercial building currently in use, and requires different equipment and expertise. Lighting can take a shot from ordinary to exraordinary. Some rooms are well lit, but use different types of lights like incandescent and florescent which have wildly different colors. They need to be balanced and possibly supplemented with either strobes or hot lights or the existing sunlight. If there are windows involved, a decision will need to be made concerning which time of day would be best. Do you want streaming sunlight in the picture, which can create hot spots, or do you want the interior light to be the same intensity as the outdoors? Decorations, reflections, working around employees - it can all be a little overwhelming without the help of an experienced professional photographer.

We were recently down in Las Vegas for five days on a ground based assignment for a client and I had the chance one evening to get some stock aerial shots of the strip. Since we weren't able to fly our plane down due to bad weather, I rented a small helicopter from 702 Helicopters located at the North Las Vegas airport. The pilot was great and pre-filed a flight plan with ATC. I got there a little later than I had hoped - it seems like Las Vegas is always under construction on the major highways - and it was already getting dark. It was pretty windy, about 15-20 knots with 30 knot gusts occasionally, but it was fairly smooth in the air. Here are a few samples from the shoot:



Despite the low light, the bumpy ride around the strip and avoiding the other air traffic things turned out really well. I was amazed to see how green the MGM Grand was in comparison to everything else from the air. It really stands out!

To view these and more images from our trip to Las Vegas, go to our stock photography library by clicking here or on the "Stock" tab on top of this page and search for Las Vegas.