Editorial watch photography of Jack Mason Brand life style watches, available at Nordstorm now.
www.jackmasonbrand.com
Please contact us for pricing on high quality watch photography.
Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga Review
I’ve recently got the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga for business travel, and I absolutely love the design. The Macbook Pro I’ve had before just don’t feel right in hand, and the keyboard and trackpad on the macbook pro is absolutely horrendous for prolonged use, not to mention the utterly ugly low res non-touch screen (exclude the overly priced retina models)
What I really like about the thinkpad yoga:
What I want to see improved:
Enough said, here are some photos that shows the beauty of the Thinkpad design. And as always, you can purchase one directly from Amazon
Often times, a white background may just be too boring for the product you want to showcase. Adding a colorful background may significantly improve perceived value of your goods.
Below is the product without any editing.
A few simple steps in editing, we can achieve the final results below.
Things I have modified from original shots:
1. Reposition products to maximize space.
2. Use Pen Tool to make a cutout path of products for generating shadow layer later, and make a duplicate layer of the product cut out shot (Box Blur Shadow Layer).
3. Make a new orange background layer(BG Color Layer).
4. Add vignetting effect around the edges by boosting the contrast and then lowering lightness on a new duplicated orange background layer(BG Vignetting Layer).
5. Add box blur effect and free transform the Box Blur Shadow Layer to make it look appealing.
6. Merge layers, resize and sharpen to save for web dispaly.
– Then you are done!
Below is a screenshot of layers I’ve created for this project.
Update:
I have just completed a more complex project using the same technique, in this project, I have added reflection effect to each product, as well as a black fill which made subject look like they are sitting on colored glass with special lighting, all done in Photoshop. You can compare the before and after results below. I would say that the single most time consuming part of this project is path cutting of products with intricate details. The background and reflection effects are really easy to apply.
Instead of spending hundreds of dollars for a bounce light box for product photography, you can simply make your own using Bristol papers. In this case, I’ve made a very nice one using just 4 pieces of recycled Bristol papers. Just roll them into a slight curve, and place on your existing product shooting table. In my case, I have one strobe setup from the top with a big diffuser panel. I used 3 papers for the shooting area, and then a 4th piece of paper in front of the camera to catch more bounced light. The result is obvious — It works!
For less than $1, it’s well worth the effort. Try it for yourself!
Image below, the top one is photographed without a bounce box, the bottom one is photographed with this homemade bounce light box.
Made a image for our website banner, and thought it would be fun to also zoom it to an extreme and show some amazing details of the vinyl record. Wow! I’ve never seen it this up close!
Below is the outcome of the shoot. A very fun way of using vinyl records, since it’s texture is very unique, and is perfect for our record cufflinks!
Made two stop motion animations.
The first one (star wars flip-bar cufflinks) is actually my first try, thus the transition of a full loop is not as well planed as the second attempt featuring a pair of USB cufflinks. Both made using 17 frames edited and created in Photoshop.
Had the fortunate opportunity to photograph the world’s most expensive pair of cufflinks, and possibly the most expensive toy car model, and possibly the most expensive belt buckle at Jacob & Co’s headquarter in New York.
Currently they are for sale online exclusively at cufflinks.com
Turned out to be a really interesting experience as I have to setup the studio on the spot in a conference room. As the space is very limited we have to find creative ways about mounting the seamless paper, which we did mount to back of the office chairs..
Hit the thumbnails for more views!
A composition I did using a Lacie Hard Drive’s brushed aluminum top surface.
Superhero Cufflinks, Licensed and only available at cufflinks.com
Major upgrade in my office studio setup. Gone are the old computer desk converted shooting table with student grade monolights, came a brand new 105mm lens, freshly installed large product shooting table, speedotron black line power pack and 3 lights, plus plenty of light modifiers that further expands our shooting capabilities.
As a product photographer, you are often faced with the challenge of limited workspace, most often times, limited prop choices. I was given a (really tiny!) piece of wood and to be expected to produce a 30″ print of a pair of our new style cufflinks fully blown up for the upcoming trade show.
The key is to find the right angle that utilizes most of the useable wood texture, combined with photoshop’s new powerful Content Aware Fill function, the final result came out better than expected.
What it looks like
Final result
Tried something fun with Baxter in our office, we put a Steak Cufflinks on his paw and he hold it for just a few seconds for me to snap a photo and later edit it.
Included the original shot for comparison.
My co-worker Sarah just recently got engaged, and she is in need of a cool post card to mail out. We saw a similar scramble ideal on the internet, improvised it, and turned it into our own work, using our scramble cufflinks and her own engagement ring. it turned out to be pretty darn cool.
Next, I photographed and arranged our letter cufflinks for our upcoming 2012 catalog.