So, as I said last year, I’ve been a bit lax on my blogs posts and it would seem the same has happened again so far this year. Maybe it’s a good thing, too busy to write posts?…
Anyway, to round off last year, I’d been photographing Wine & Gin bottles and the last studio shoot of the year was another product shot of a new wine.
This is another ‘classic’ product on a white background, perfect for just showing off the bottle of wine with no distractions.
If you sell products, why not give me a call for a free quotation to photograph your products.
A couple of weeks after my Gin Product Photos I got another call from Gotland Gin. Was I free to do another shoot for them and how quick could I get them done. Ideally 4 days!
Ok, I was luckily in-between jobs and they delivered the items that day, on the Saturday. So, Sunday morning I set to. Gotland Gin wanted to show off the new hampers but also their eco packaging.
First up was just the single bottles of Gin in a festive style.
When I create product photos with props, I also like to vary the photo a little bit but keep it in the same style. It makes for a nicer presentation on the customer webpages.
In this a movement of the props, but I also created unique snowflakes for each photo.
Next up, the hampers..
The wood shavings went everywhere 🙂
Then the big one… So many items, what a lovely hamper!
Finally some smaller gin selection boxes.
This time I actual kept the setup the same and the products themselves made enough of a change.
Finally, the triple pack. I slight change the the background and using the lovely Gotland Gin ribbon.
So, if you have products that require photos for your website or social media, be it standard or festive, please get in touch for a free non-obligation quote.
As mentioned in previous post, I seem to have shot a lot of Bottle Product photos this year. This is good. Any product photos is good, it’s also covid friendly!
In November, I was contacted buy a local Gin Distillery, Gotland Gin. They are just a few miles down the road. I had contact them during lockdown 2020, but they didn’t need any product photo then. However that had now changed with a new Cloudberry Gin.
They had different size bottles that they want photos of.
and they also wanted some cloudberries in the shot too!
They also asked for something creative and had liked some of my Water Splash Challenge Photos I’d taken during lockdown in 2020.
So, I created them a photo with the fruit they recommend for their Gin.
In July, (still catching up on old posts) I did some updated Product photos for Torview Wines. Here is one of the Wine Bottle Product shots. I won’t post them all as there are more to come in another post soon!
This is a standard product photo with a front/side lit highlight. Simple but effective product photo.
If you run a business that requires product photos, please get in touch and we can discuss your requirements
As I mentioned in my last post, I just haven’t really posted much in my blog this year and I promised to try and improve.
So what Have I been up to. Well earlier in the year (March actually) I was contacted by a local lady in our village who had set-up a new business during lockdown in 2020. She was making homemade bath bombs and wanted some photographed. How could I refuse. A few days later a box of bath bombs appeared on my doorstep.
After bring the bath bombs into the studio and setting up for a standard product photo I started placing the product in position. Wow, the smell…. lovely….
Now, this was the challenge, a white bath bomb on a white background, not something I’d had to photograph before.
I started with a shape that had some definition to it. An Octopus!
This photographed well so I worked through the different shapes and then selected the ball shaped bath bomb.
and finally an item with a bit of colour.
This final job was the cleanup, these bath bomb as you can imagine are very delicate and crumbly. They shed bit very easily and with clearing the shooting area between each shot it had created a nice pile of lovely smelly crumbs on the background area and on the floor!
Over the years I’ve photographed many different types of businesses, from Food to Jewellery making and even Magicians. Since moving to Devon, my Commercial Portfolio has expanded to photographing more countryside businesses, like Holiday B&Bs and Wine Making. However, despite living in a village surrounded by Farms, I’d never really photographed them much.
The other day, after a trip out to test my new Camouflage Coverings, I returned home to see they were grassing the grass in the field opposite.
This was probably the first time I stood and watched this happening, as generally I avoid any sort of grass cutting as it really affects my hayfever. However, I persevered and tried not to breathe in when the cutting swung close.
I posted these shots on our local facebook group, they got some interest and I was told they’d be back the next day to collect the grass.
I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to complete the process, so kept an eye, or more, listened out for the sound of the tractors in the field and then headed over to take some more photos.
It’s an interesting process, and great to see the farming machinery working to see how they collect it all.
Using my big lens, allowed my to get some great close-up photos, whilst of course keeping a safe distance outside the field.
The final stage of the process is clearing the grass and taking it away. Again, a different set of machines, this time 2, to gather up and store the grass.
I was pleased to be able to sell a few prints from the batch of photos I took and it gave me some great additional commercial photos for my portfolio.
I have recently realised that I never wrote a blog post about the vineyard harvest I took photo of during the year I documented a year on a vineyard. or as I called it, Life of a Grape!
So, better late the never, an September’s day in 2018 I was asked to come along to the vineyard and take photos of the harvest.
It was a nice day, but clouds were gathering, the team of volunteers having finished their tea and cakes got to work on harvesting. It was just one section of the vineyard that was being done that day, but there was plenty to do.
Grapes quickly filled their buckets, which in turn filled the crates…
These were then loaded on the the trailer to be brought into the barn…
and fed into the machines for de-stalking and then into large containers ready for the next stage..
The whole process was then repeated over and over again.
We managed to beat the weather and with the group of volunteers this section of the vineyard was harvested in just a few hours.
It was great to be able to witness this first hand to see and document the process for the vineyard. I then returned a few days later to document the pressing process.
Over the past few years, I’ve been taking photos for a local vineyard. (See Life of a Grape link below).
I spent a year photographing the key stages of the work process, from the initial pruning of the last years vines, through to harvesting and bottling.
Then, of course, the all important bottles shots.
I’ve taken some nice on location images,
plus standard products shots.
I’ve varied the style over the years based on requirements and needs for that photo.
The first photos were full product images, inline with an existing lighting style of past photos.
I’ve also taken some more ‘interesting’ photos with coloured background to match the bottle labels.
This year a new wine was produced. This came in a different style bottle and was sparkling. So I used a different setup to show off the colour…
and the bubbles, by adding to glasses to the shoot.
The latest wine, I was asked again to show the colour, so I used the same lighting, but on a normal bottle.
If you run a vineyard and would like a free quotation for some product photos, process photos or a ‘Year in a Vineyard’ shoot, please contact me using the link in the Commercial Work page below.
Last year I had some interesting photography jobs. One of them was photographing cars for a local care home. It was Electric Cars to be precise and they wanted to quite rightly show them off.
This was something different for me. I have in the past photographed racing cars and sports cars at racing and rally tracks, although showing the car in motion ‘whizzing’ past me on the road could have made an interesting photo, I didn’t think that really fitted the requirements for this shoot. So instead we went for something a bit more in keeping with their usage.
I took a few shots out on the road, then concentrated more on showing the car in the surroundings of the home. This allowed for better positioning of the cars with the building and people.
Being electric cars it was important to show them in their recharging state and area.
This posed a challenge. How to make a charging area look interesting.
As well as the fact it was so bright now, that the cars were really reflecting a lot of light and the sky was looking quite white too as the end charging point faced towards the sun.
One image I had in mind was showing all the cars together. Unfortunately I could only get 5 of the 6 into this area, but this main group photo worked really well.
This image I thought also worked well as a website header banner and was really dramatic in black and white.
You can view more of my commercial work in my Commercial Work gallery below.
Earlier in the year I was approached by a local Bed & Breakfast. In fact, it was a bit more than a B&B, it was 4 holiday cottages on the grounds of a Country House!
This was a great project, with lots of different elements to it. Firstly there was the cottages, this was the main element to the shot. To photograph the outside and the interiors of each cottage plus interesting details.
These cottages had amazing interiors and were decorated to the highest standards.
With lovely fittings…
…and lots of homely details…
as well as amazing grounds and views.
This was an amazing project spread over a couple of day to capture all the areas that were requested as well as waiting for nice weather for the exterior shoots.
You can view more photos from this shoot and other commercial work as well as further information on my Commercial Work page.
If you’ve been reading my blog, you would be aware that I have been photographing a vineyard through the year. This was to show the processes and daily activities that happen on a vineyard and the production of wine.
Not only has this shown how wine is made, the grapes ripening, but also the vineyard through the seasons.
I tried to show this by creating an image showing the changes through the year along the same row in the vineyard.
As well as the differences in the Devon weather, you can definitely see the changes of the seasons and growing of the vines!
