Happy Thursday everyone - One of the areas of my photography which I am focusing on improving is product photography. For a long time, it was a skill which I had overlooked as a possible interest and in truth I had probably taken for granted that I could be decent given what I had learned in my other photographic areas. After all, the products usually never moved and you had in theory an unlimited amount of time to figure out the composition and lighting. The truth of it is that this is a whole field of expertise onto itself, and while it may be true that there are aspects of product photography that may appear easier than other genres, it simply means that the standards are that much higher. A lot of my practice time is now used with some new to try to get better in this space. The large driver is of course that I see a potential business line maybe someday here, but also because I have learned so much from each of the other photographic steps that I have taken. And I guess this is the lesson that I wanted to get to with this post here. I never knew what I didn't know before I took each step. With those steps some other skill or bit of knowledge became apparent and in some cases they were even obvious after the fact. However, I know that if I had never tried that brand new thing, I never would have realized that brand new thing. The image posted tonight was at the time nearly a happy accident. This flower used to be in my parent's house and I was bored one day and looking for items to shoot and found this flower near a front window. The high exposure and backlit window gave the impression of a white seamless background and the transparent petal stood in contrast to the stem. I loved the look and worked a few different angles for a good bit of time. In doing so, however, I saw new potential in working in a high-key style, and more importantly more recently I have taken a more serious look at my skill set in product photography and lighting. This is has of course opened new doors of things I didn't know before and now my challenge is to work and learn in a brand new space. Continually growing and improving. Have a great Thursday night -
Houston, Texas - Natural Light