Glass - Shooting Products.

Lately I have been working on a lot of product photography for different clients. All have been around unique artist work but for commercial reason. On of the clients is James Dodson at Tasmanian Glassblowers. James is one of the last of a breed that creates purely in glass. His work ranges from tumblers to animals and very unique vases. Each item is crafted in his Breadalbane studio and is top quality.

A few weeks ago I spent the day photographing a lot of his work, Above is an action shot of Dry Ginger Ale being poured into one of his tumblers. While the rest of the brief was more about a pure looking shot, I couldn't help myself in creating one action shot.

You will be able to buy James work from My Emporium in the near future.

Big thanks to Matt from Within One Moment for being my assistant for the day.

BTS (Behind the Scenes)

When I get a brief for something a little different than my normal work, I like to practice and really know the ins and outs of the shoot. As glassware is notoriously hard to work with, I spent a night at home practicing.

The trick with working with reflective materials is not to use direct light. Create light sources from refractive light. In the photo to the right I am using one strobe to light the background, the sides are black to give a black edge to the image and the "roof" is white to light the front of the glass.

The reflections are created by perspex, either white or black depending on the look you are going for.

Practice example. Notice the black edges.

Shooting on Location

To make sure that our work on the day was a sharp as possible, I used Capture One software to tether the camera. This gave us the ability to review the images and make adjustments. We also used a remote trigger so we didn't need to handle the camera to reduce shake.

The issue with shooting on location is that dust, dirt and other things can become part of the shot. Unfortunately there isn't a huge amount that can be done about this apart from being a careful as possible but there will always be some work needed in Photoshop to clean up those pesky spots.

Matt placing a glass into the capture zone!

EVA - A Painterly Portrait

Model: Eva Ning Wei

Above is my beautiful friend Eva. This is from June in Perth, Western Australia and playing around in a studio just for laughs.

This photo represents a move in my editing workflow that I am happy with. I am always trying to improve how I retouch and practice constantly to evolve. While this style is not for every job, for my personal work, this is definitely a step in the direction I am happy with.

BTS (Behind the Scenes)

In this image I broke down the steps in a more specific way.

Firstly I moved to different RAW convertor and started using Capture One by Phase One. I am amazed at the quality I can pull out of this software over Adobe Camera RAW.

Secondly I structured my retouch into desecrate sections as you can see on the right.

Working non-destructively in Photoshop and strictly in my new workflow I can move up and down the sections efficiently and fix issues I notice as I work (look at it from bottom to top).

The final result should be full of texture, colour balanced and give a look more of a painting than a straight photo.

Close up of final image. Notice the texture and tones. Click to enlarge.

Editing Derby - Behind the Scenes

Music by Audrey Vixen
See finished album at on Facebook

So to show people how I edit a bout photo shoot and also give a rough indication of the time to do it, I time-lapsed my post-production workflow. It isn't something I would normally do, but thought it might be educational for others + it was interesting to review myself afterwards.

My Process Overview

Import all the images into a single folder called 0. Original
Select all images and reject them
Go to first image in the set and review. If it's a keeper, then unflag it, else move on. Repeat till the end of the set.
Once culling is complete, I create a new folder called 1. Rejected
Select all remaining images that are rejected and move them into the Rejected folder I just created.
Select 0. Original folder and start editing on the first image.
eep editing each image and rejecting them if they are as good as I thought they where. Before moving on, if not rejecting the image then give it a rating. Usually 1 star as passable but up to 5 if I think it's really rad.
Once finished, move the newly rejected photos
Upload to my online gallery and social media

I use presets to speed my editing up and a lot of copy & pasting of setting from one image to the next.