Digital Illustration in Product Photography

Pre planning a product photograph is the best way to get the maximum impact for your buck.

Many of the conversations I have with potential clients start out with them calling me up and asking, "How much?"

And, I always feel a little bad when I have to ask "For what?"

I am not being a wise guy. I am not making fun of them. I am simply trying to identify what their goal is for the product shot.

For example, the digital illustration above was created to be used with a press release that would go out to all of the automotive trade magazines. Our goal, therefore, was to create an image that would appeal to the magazine editors.

It had to:

be more than a simple documentary photo of the product on white.

illustrate what the product looks like.

illustrate what problem the product solves.

be shown in a way that the target audience would understand.

The shot would also be used for their catalog and other sales collateral. But, since the editorial use came first, that was what we designed and optimized the photograph for.

We started with a "napkin" plan, a sketch of the elements of the shot jotted down on a piece of paper. This was our blueprints for the rest of the production. Without this step, we could have spent hours or even days, going back and forth, trying to come to a meeting of the minds, wasting time and money.

Instead, we knew what angle the client liked best angle, we knew where the "sweep" should be. And, we knew what kind of a stock shot in the background would appeal to our target audience.

The setup, in my small photo studio, just outside of Boston, was fairly simple. We only had one wiper, since this was a prototype. We shot it twice, using a nice broad light to give us smooth highlights. In post production, we set up the stock background and knocked out the background on the two wiper shots.

The whole shoot and post production was around three hours. But, we couldn't have done it that quickly, or efficiently, if we hadn't started with a plan.