Lighting for Product Photography

Video Transcript

"My name is Anthony Maddaloni and I'm going to talk about lighting for product photography. Now the type of lighting that most people use for product photography would be artificial strobe photography. There are many different types of artificial strobe units that you can buy for product photography. Now it really depends on what kind of product you're shooting. Is it a car, is it a glass of milk. You really have to think about what you're photographing, in terms of what kind of strobes you're going to be using. Not only are you thinking about the actual light source, which is for the most part the strobe, but different types of ways you can control that strobe. You can use grids. You can use diffusers. You can make incredibly directional lighting to be creative or to make great affects in your photography. You can use what's a technique called breaking the light, where you just make this light look very, very soft and very interesting. You can use different types of gels to give the image a little bit of warmth or a little bit of coolness. So those are the types of lighting sources that you're going to be using in that type of photography. Really, it's what you do with it. Really, the power is in your creative mind and your ability to sit and look at something with this lighting and think about, well this is what I want to do. Lighting is extremely interesting. You're going to need some kind of light meter. A lot of tests. Whether they be digital or film, to really dial in to the look that you want."