Product Photography Lighting

Video Transcript

"Hello, this is Mark Bowers from bowersphotography.com in Utah, and we're going to do, lighting for pop product photography. We have a little object right here, it's a little statue that we're going to photograph, and it's dark. We're going to do a dark on dark, and I'm going to show you how to light this. We place this near the front of a table, and we want to have at least a bunch of room behind it, here we've got about 18 inches behind it. We're just going to clamp this material up on this arm. The next thing that we want to do is fill in the shadows with a reflector, so put this in here to give it some 3 dimensionality and some form. The next thing we want to do is add a little bit of accent to the edges of the shadow, or the edges of the sculpture, okay, there it is, good. And then the last thing we want to do is add a little bit of fill light to the front of the statue, and we're going to do that with some silver material. I'm moving this silver reflector until that light is just right on the sculpture, just where we want it. The object that we're trying to do, is when you photograph something dark, the form is defined by its highlights. And when you do something light, the form is defined by its shadows, so we'd like to set up something with a light background. With this project, we're doing a white on white background, and it's a good exercise in that, what you're trying to do is create the form, the 3 dimensionality with light, and the way you create that with a light colored object, is with shadows, and so what we're doing is lighting both of the sides, and we're using shadows to define the shape. Here we've got the main light on this side, and then we got a fill light on the other side that's about half as bright. And then what we're going to do, is pickup a silver reflector to create some accents to define the shape of the white. Here we've added the edge light to the side of the candle to give it a nice shinny edge. And there you have it, a nice 3 dimensional looking candle."