Learn to master lighting and composition in order to create amazing product shots!
Whether you’re photographing a bottle of wine or a painting, a pair of shoes or a piece of jewelry, successful product photography first requires a thorough knowledge of light. You need to fully understand how light works—angles...
Read More
Learn to master lighting and composition in order to create amazing product shots!
Whether you’re photographing a bottle of wine or a painting, a pair of shoes or a piece of jewelry, successful product photography first requires a thorough knowledge of light. You need to fully understand how light works—angles, reflectance, quantity, quality, shadows, and more—as well as how it interacts with the materials, shapes, surfaces, and textures you’re photographing. Once you know where to place the light and how to shape it, along with key compositional and photographic techniques, you can create beautiful photographs of any product or object you encounter.
Of all the photographic genres, product photography requires the most precision, a consistent workflow, and a deep knowledge of optics. While this may seem daunting, anyone can learn to take great product photographs with photographer Nath-Sakura’s Product Photography: Lighting, Composition, and Shooting Techniques. Filled with inspiring and beautiful imagery, this book features a wide variety of products with diverse characteristics that will help you learn to tackle any challenge. Is the material glass, metal, liquid, plastic, or rubber? Is the surface’s finish shiny, reflective, dull, matte, or satin? Is the texture smooth, rough, or somewhere in between? Nath-Sakura addresses all of this and more.
As opposed to other “photo cookbooks” out there, this book dives deep into the essential concepts you need to know in order to gain a strong technical background for your work. Plus, alongside the text and final photographs are plentiful diagrams, behind-the-scenes shots, and lighting setups to help you on your journey to mastering product photography. Whether your images are destined for catalogs, magazines, advertising, or fine art applications, Product Photography equips you with what you need to know to create flawless product shots.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part 1: The Laws of Optics and Light, and How to Use Them
Part 2: Volume, Texture, and Material
Part 3: Lighting and Practice
Part 4: Composition and Color
Part 5: Image Analysis and Lighting Setups
Read Less
jefforns
PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY by Nath-Sakura
This is a very detailed, marvelously produced and extremely well written and produced book!
The book is laid out in 5 Chapters; each of which is a vast amount of information and explanation of light and its effect on your subject.
Starting with light, its many forms, uses and end results; the reader will enjoy a major learning experience; and like myself, play around with what the author is explaining.
I was most interested the section on Reflection and Refraction of light and how it effects both the subject of the image as well as the composition. Add to that Nath-Sakura’s comments on the use of mirrors and jewelry and they give you an entire course in this subject.
About twelve years ago I sat in on a lecture concerning advertising photography and all I got out of it was to first make sure you know what the client wants, But, not how to do it!
This book will tell you how to do it.