Photographing products, takes quite a lot of patience, and a keen eye to be able to see what your light does to the subject. Photography is all about bringing the 3^rd dimension back, because something that has a texture, or a shape, or a smell or taste, can’t be experienced in a flat medium such as a photographed, so our “toy” to play with in our profession, is light – we bend it, shape it, feather it, make it darker and lower-key or lighter and high-key, and light is the essence of how we create images with dimension.

To photograph any round shape, one uses the light its feather and fall-off to create a shape, and show the texture and grooves of something such as a bottle cap. Flat lighting works well with bigger families, as we would rather want to concentrate on getting all the people involved, getting them to smile and have a great time with their children and loved ones, there isn’t time to fiddle with lights. The moment the shoot gets more technical, we use lighting that is more side-on, or from an angle that will create a stripe down a bottle’s side, or a nice highlight on a can’s cap for example.

Dutton Plastics had a range of their products recently photographed by us, and it was quite a creative challenge, to photograph the bottle- and can caps they produce in their plastic division. Caps come in all shapes and sizes, and Dutton Plastics is a company that has been supplying many manufactures with caps of all sorts of products we use in our households every day. We had some fun photographing them, and creating all sorts of interesting arrangements with the different sorts.

Yolandi Jacobsz & Riani Labuschagne

Product Photography