How would you improve this?

[d2creative]

I shot this to be used for layout purposes (could be final if the client happens to like it) for a new snack product. It's a chip made from puffed corn, beans and rice. This particular flavor was some kind of spicy southwest flavor. The art director on this particular job gave me all the ingredients and said the beans and rice (and product of course) were most important. Then it was up to me to arrange, light and shoot.

So mostly i'm looking for constructive criticism on the lighting, but any thoughts any thing else is also appreciated. My lighting was one alien bee with 10 degree spot camera left aimed at the hero chip pretty much running in the same direction as the grain of the wood. Another bee in a 5' octobox directly overhead for a main ambient light and softening of shadows. Another bee with white bounce umbrella coming in from camera right for fill. And finally a hand held flashlight aimed at the chips from camera left with some fake daisies being used as a gobo to dappple the light a bit. My D200 was balanced for the bees so the flashlight gave me a warmer sun light type of light.

Now i'm just making all this up as I go along so I wouldn't be suprised if I botched it all up compared to how it SHOULD have been done. If you go to http://www.pringles.com/pages/index.shtml and look at Pringles Select, that was the direction i was going towards. I really wanted more of a soft, sunlight type of look like that but this was the best i could get. They are a little hard to see but it should give you an idea. Any help on how to better get that look would be awesome. Oh, and other than a slight color tweak of the reds this is straight out of the camera. I'm leaving any photoshop stuff to the designer on the project.

Anyway, here's the resulting pic. Fire away....



BTW, Abel... have you given any thought to giving us some kind of "Commercial" forum? The only place this kind of thing fits is in the "General" forum, and I can't get any kind of constructive criticism there for this kind of shot. I would love to see something for the professionals shooting food, products, corporate stuff, etc.

Thanks!

[venchka]

Tighten up. The blank space on the table in the middle needs filling. Put something between the rice & garlic for contrast and separation. Distribute the colors moe evenly. You have all the white on the right. Let's see the peppers! A few more of the clients product too. The corn looks soft and something of an afterthought. Too much garlic? I think the whole garlic head is more interesting than the two cloves. The lighting is flat and the head of garlic is blown out on my monitor.

[epoh]

Probably a few more chips, and maybe a slight bit of blur on the ingredients. The chips are almost lost amongst that bowl, the white rice, the corn and the onion. The colors also look a tiny bit flat or off to me, but I am not on a calibrated monitor.

[OneWayMule]

The picture lacks mood.
And the lighting has everything to do with it.
As mentioned above, its flat...

But dont think about the lighting first, think about what MOOD do you want to give? I'm imagining these things sitting next to a window in later afternoon out on a beautiful farm.
Then piece it together by asking yourself these questions:

- What BRIGHTNESS do i want? (Normal, Under or over-exposed?) = normal makes sense
- COLOR? (Neutral, warm or cool?) = warm would be ideal for sunset
- CONTRAST? (1:1, 1:2, 1:5, 1:9...?) = I'm go with deeper shadows (~1:5) then what you have (1:2)
- SPECULAR or DIFFUSED light? = sunsets are nice and warm, but also specular in nature. So a nice mix of both.
- DIRECTION? = Imagine streak of dapple light coming in through the window from the side.

Mood/emotion/imagination always before technical mumbo-jumbo...

ps - the 6 things i just told you are worth in GOLD :)

[d2creative]

Good point about the white on the right.
I couldn't show the peppers more. My direction was that the beans and rice were the most important ingredients. The chips are very small (much smaller than a typical potato chip, more like a sunchip) so it was tough scale wise. But more chips didn't look so good. Also, I left some space around all edges so the designer would have room to crop in. So some of the garlic, peppers, rice corn, will disappear. And there will be graphics around and possible on top of the photo. All this will bring out the chips a little more. Usually I'm designing the graphics and art directing the shoots, not taking the photos. haha But if helps me visualize the end use. I also have the same shot but shot with a wider aperture so the corn and garlic are more soft. Other than that, wouldn't i have to use photoshop to soften the stuff close to the chips? Again, that's something I'm leaving to the designer.

But about that lighting.... how would you have gone about lighting this? I still have it set up so I could re-shoot it....

Thanks!!!

[Gordon]

Originally Posted by OneWayMule

- SPECULAR or DIFFUSED light? = sunsets are nice and warm, but also specular in nature. So a nice mix of both.

That one right there seems to be the crux of why a softbox isn't the same as a window. The softbox gives clean, even, diffused light, but windows almost never are.

How would you recreate that mix of warm, mostly diffused light with a specular component that you get from a typical sunset - with the sun low on the horizon and the whole sky picking up the colour and glow ?

[The Loft Studios]

Yes, I agree with the flatness.....

Coming from a commercial product shooting environment, you'll need at least 3 to 4 lights, some grids and snoots, and some flags, gobos and warming gels to really pull this off in a professional way that I think your're looking for.

[d2creative]

Originally Posted by The Loft Studios

Yes, I agree with the flatness.....

Coming from a commercial product shooting environment, you'll need at least 3 to 4 lights, some grids and snoots, and some flags, gobos and warming gels to really pull this off in a professional way that I think your're looking for.

Ya, i used 3 lights plus one hand held flash light, a grid, one or two flags and a gobo. It's hard to tell here but i had the flashlight shooting through some daises to hit the chips to give that uneven light. You can really tell when the shot is next to one of the shots without it. But like you said, it's a bit flat. I was having a problem where the higher contrast lighting was giving me harsh shadows rather than soft. Any idea how i can achieve better contrast but keep the soft shadows?
Again, pretend you have 3 lights. How would you have gone about lighting this? Light placement, modifiers, etc. I can tell what's wrong with it or what I don't like about it, but i don't know how to FIX it! I know it's hard to explain especially without being ther messing with the lights in person, but i'm sure you would at least have a good starting point. Thanks!

[d2creative]

And why the warming gels???
Would that be something helpful for digital? Different than messing with white balance settings?

[The Loft Studios]

Here are some examples:

[d2creative]

Originally Posted by The Loft Studios

Here are some examples:

Yup, exactly what i was going for and that was the style of stuff i was looking at as reference. So how do i get there????

[The Loft Studios]

You want a Large Soft Box to control your shadow detal.
You want the snoots, grids and gobos to control the highlight detail.
You want the warming gels to control your mood.
You want a 100mm to 200mm lens to control your DOF

Start off with a large softbox overhead and slightly back (either straight overhead or to one side or the other) at a 45 degree angle. Bring in your grids, snoots and flagged or gobo'ed lights somewhere from the side or slightly from the front. Using glass bricks to shine the hard lights thru can sometime give a kewl effect if a warming gel is applied. Add mirrors where and when necessary then meter carefully and there you go.....

[The Loft Studios]

Originally Posted by d2creative

And why the warming gels???
Would that be something helpful for digital? Different than messing with white balance settings?

The warming gels have nothing to really do with film or digital.....it just helps with the mood of the shot.
Depends on how you white balance.....
I would just set my camera to "sunlight" or "flash" mode and go from there.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

To me it seams overly flat, as mentioned above, try to give it some depth. Maybe increase the amount of light directly on the chips to bring them out as if the sun is shining on them directly?

Also noticed a distracting black spot in the rice, debri in the rice itself most likely.

Since you are supposed to emphasise the beans I would change that background or throw some light on it to seperate it better from the beans.

Maybe peal the hair from the corn back, get the kernals clear of that bit of distraction, usually if you pull it down a few times with a wet hand it will come back and stay where you pull it to.

Do you have access to some green peppers? chile or jalapeno that is a lighter green and not the real dark green? Just to add some color shift to the shot.

That second pepper behind the bowl just looses it's stem into a green glob in the current shot, pull the stem out or shift the pepper where none of the stem is visible.

Are they attached to that bowl? Try a different color/texture/finish bowl if one is handy. Maybe even a small cast iron pot that has a deep patina.

As to the light overall you need to get more into one direction, people are used to seeing sunlight coming from one direction into a room.

[d2creative]

Thanks guys!
This is REALLY helping me learn. So much better than "looks good" or "too flat". Pointing out the problem is one thing but suggesting tecniques on how to improve is sooooo much better.
I'll be making some adjustments tonite and re-shooting it. I'll post the results.

I had the 5' octobox directly overhead but it was shooting straight down. doh!