It's about time for some new photoshoot styling ideas for small products like jewellery or cosmetics. Of course I used my favourite concrete blocks to create these new and unique sets. To have a set with truly unique imperfections or colouring shades and so on make sure you check for the phrase 'the set pictured / a unique set will be shipped to you'.
But that's not all of course I took your emails to heart and some questions have been 'how do these props and sculpture solids handle light changes'; 'do I need to paint them to get different effects? but I don't want ruin them' and 'with what and how can I create a mood with these props?' ...
Well, the answer to all of those and similar questions is 'light' or the manipulation of light.
First things first, of course you can wait for a cloudy day for almost neutral light and on a sunny day you will have warm 'fairy' light and that is fine if you have the opportunity to collect your items for one large shoot and don't have to photograph your creations in due course. Light manipulation will be your best friend if the latter is the case or if you want to change things to underline the objects characteristics with the light.
So how can it be done? One way is by using colourful fabric over your lights, another is to reflect the light with a 'golden moon' [name of reflector] or silver surface and of course with a white fabric screen you can break bad light and create soft light or take away almost all shadows. Lastly, you can use the camera settings to adjust the light from sunny to cloudy and so on.
This does not only mean that you can take the sunlight yellow glow out but you can also put it in. Same with a cold blue tone, have a play with the cloudy settings and without any extra props like fabric or paint the mood will change completely and the appearance of the concrete blocks with it as well.
Since these settings are easily found but often underused I won't share details on how to find them as I am sure you will do, I trust you. One tip however, start an experiment with a white styling setup and start playing around. Next step could be, for example, a red styling background setup and manipulating it towards a dark purple. Oh these possibilities ....
Below I'm adding more styling and setup ideas, note the difference between blue/cloudy and yellow/sunny light. For a clean white feel free to explore Concrete Photography Props And Jewellery Styling Inspiration 2.0 and alternatively for the use of paper backgrounds photographed with clean white light Product Photography Styling Ideas With Modular Geometric Concrete Blocks.
As you can see the blocks are easy going not just in ways of styling them but also as in how they handle the light. Concrete is just fantastic this way, just imagine putting an extra special accent to the shade of the nail polish or gem stone sparkle with the light. Below are three more landscape ideas to display small products on. I hope these will inspire and help answer some of your questions but please feel invited to keep them coming in comments or as always via email as well.
All the best
Antje
You might also like ...
