When Steve Cross (previous client of mine) began working with Michael Hooks at Next Level AT he saw an immediate need for some new branding and thought that bringing me on board to do some new product photography would be a good step.  I took a quick look at the website with the pictures they had on there and totally agreed!  One of the reasons I think stellar product photos are important (and I’m totally not biased!) is because the decision to buy a product often comes within the first few seconds of seeing the product.  The rest is just a matter of convincing our pocketbooks to agree.  It’s imperative for companies to spend the extra money and get some great photographs to showcase their great products.

As far as Next Level AT… let me give you a brief background. Michael Hooks (founder) is basically the Billy Mays for the visually impaired community.  Hooks, being legally blind himself, has a passion and dedication for getting the right assistive technology products into the hands that need it the most.  He worked for many years training others at the Washington State School for the Blind on these very products.  He is known to many as the go-to guy for all products of this kind.

It was a joy to work on this project not only because Michael and Steve are great guys but because this was a project that gave me an excuse to use my studio lights – something I haven’t used in a while.  During this whole shoot I was able to coach Steve on how to light the products the way that I like to.  I prefer to light products in order to show off their texture, dimension, and make the viewer feel like they were almost holding the product.

See Steve using my backup camera while I work hard behind the scenes:

 

My first video.  I’m still learning the software but I’m loving video stuff!

http://www.focusdesigns.com

These.

are.

so.

much.

fun.

Seriously.

I have the priveledge of working near this guy, Daniel Wood.  We both occupy the same building, VERTO, which is a business incubator in downtown Vancouver, Washington.  There are many other really cool people here, Logan Thompson of Blinksource is our newest addition and he has helped me with the new design of davidmartschinske.com Thanks Logan!  Also included in VERTO are Indelisa Montoro who I partner with as a wedding florist.  She has delivered some of the most amazing displays of flowers! not to mention that they smell amazing.  Check out her company, Belle Jour.  If you end up ordering from her, tell her I sent you and she’ll give you $100 off!

So tonight I had the Idea that I wanted to do some light painting.  I wanted to do the SBU’s product photography with only one light source… my iPhone!  I was planning to use my pocketwizards to hold the shutter open as my iPhone painted all of the features of the SBU.  Cool idea huh?!  I was sidetracked by another idea (happens a lot to me) that can be summed up with two words… sleek elegance. I wanted simple, powerful, and almost mysterious lighting to create a mood of a road warrior – the SBU.  Granted, if the SBU and really anything else road-worthy were going to collide, the SBU would most likely spill it.  However, I wanted potential buyers to know that the SBU aint nothin’ to take lightly.

You can see what I mean by sleek elegance:

As you can see, I catered this more towards some sort of flyer or poster. Now all it needs is a graphic designer (Corbin Watkins?) to add some catchy tag other than “more road. less wheel.” unless people think that is cool.

Here is the lighting setup:

As you can guess I am only using two lights (alienbees b800’s with 10 and 20 degree grids) each about 120 degrees off camera axis.  I also have draped velvet in the background because that absorbs light the best.  I always try to do things right before photoshop… it makes me much happier.  Plus photoshop is a bore, the fun part is being behind the camera!

Here are some of the other detail shots (click on the image for the full gallery) I used 4 lights for the following shots, some of which I used my lage softbox:

A while ago I considered doing some product photography and then got sidetracked pushed aside from that idea.  Sad   I looked at my large paul c. buff softbox this morning and said, “I want to use you!” I looked around to find something cool to photograph and thought that my Sekonic L-758 DR Lightmeter looked fancy enough.  This light meter is amazing by the way.  I especially love that it syncs with my pocketwizards in order to have complete wireless shooting.  I only wish AlienBees integrated the pocketwizard chip to their setup like Dynalite, Profoto, and like everyone else that is a major player does! That is my main regret with AlienBees is more wires! Don’t get me wrong, I love how cheap they are.  The PCBs for AlienBees use no transformer or switching power supply.  So you are probably thinking… how do they get 500 Volts of potential when us yankees are using 120V sources?  The answer: diodes and capacitors.  Read here about full wave doublers, half wave tripplers, and cascade multipliers.  Thank you David Weikel for opening up your B400.

Anyways… enough nerd-dom.  Here are some before and after shots of what I did this morning

as you can see it appears as if the AlienBees have a color temperature a little hotter than I would have liked.. Hmmm… I was warned about that in my reasearch.  Oh well, more editing I suppose to remove the warm cast from the photos.  I guess I could actually do a white balance measurement instead of switching to the flash mode.  Why can’t the whole world be calibrated!?!?

Then I found some of Belle Jour Floral Design’s flowers from the downstairs to get something living in a shot.  I personally LOVE the way she wraps the bouquet in ti leaves.