Every once and a while Jenn gets asked about the photos in her shop. I’m proud to be her photo guy!

I’ve had the privilege to do a lot of product photo shoots with Teague’s photographer Doug Evans. And he’s shared more than a few tips with me. Thanks, Doug!

Here’s my little set-up:

• Camera: Canon 20D
• Lens: Canon EFS 17-85 mm IS zoom
• Lighting: 3 500 watt tungsten heads
• Ground: a sheet of clear plexiglass (from Home Depot) on top of white foam core (from Staples)
• Backdrop: more white foam core

I love my camera. I’ve had it for a couple years and it has never let me down. If you’re interested in photography, I highly recommend getting a digital SLR. I had 35 mm EOS 650 since high school and had a lot of fun with it, but it wasn’t until I started shooting digital that I (think) I really started to understand photography.

Now for the dumpster diving. My lights were a lucky find. One day while walking past a dumpster I saw a big black suitcase-looking thing. Curious, I pulled it out and found a nice little set of photo lights! I used them as decoration for a long time until Jenn needed photos of her products. I tried using desk lamps, but my exposures were way too long to be useful. So I plugged in those lights I had found long ago, and they worked! I’ve used them for all the 900-some photos I’ve shot for Jenn.
Oddly enough, my tripod was a dumpster find too. Either I’m lucky or I have a problem.

Happy shooting!

Update!

A few things came to mind after I posted this, um, post.

I didn’t mention that I try to shoot at f5.6 with a 72 mm focal length. This is the max that my lens will do. Sometimes 72 mm is a bit too long because my tripod can’t get up high enough or whatever, but that’s my goal. Of course, being a non-full-frame sensor on the Canon means it’s really like shooting at about 115 mm. Shooting at f5.6 gives me a fair amount of shallow depth of field effect.

My exposures are usually about 1/20 of a second. I did mention that shooting with a desk lamp resulted in exposures too slow to be useful, and 1/20 isn’t really a fast shutter speed either, but it’s way faster than what I was shooting at. I would love to have some real flashes, but that is getting too fancy even for me – unless I found some in a dumpster.

I shoot RAW format and do all my image processing in iPhoto 7. I love iPhoto. It does a great job with RAW files and I love that the latest version makes nondestructive edits to your files – like Aperture, but cheaper. I do much of my exposure and gamma correction in iPhoto along with any white balance tweaks. I calibrate my camera when I shoot, but sometimes there is a slight drift a few K here and there. Did I mention that I love iPhoto?

I do any pixel level editing in Photoshop. Usually this involves miscellaneous touch-up and bleaching out the background to a pure white. I try to get the background pure white during the shoot, but in evitably, there is a bit of vingetting due to the zoom lens, or I have to shoot just slightly dark to capture the texture in the white felt that Jenn likes to use. White on white isn’t easy, but that’s what Photoshop is for.

I have some Automator scripts set-up to convert the large 8 megapixel images down to something manageable for the web. I keep 3 versions of every file – the RAW file (in iPhoto) a editted TIFF at full resolution (these are suitable for printing) and the low resolution JPEG. We keep the images cataloged by date and I archive to DVD-ROM at the end of each year.
I also find DIY Photography a great resource for tips and tricks.

I hope the added info was helpful, maybe even interesting…

Cheers,
J.

I showed this trick to a colleague yesterday and he said it was too good not to pass along.

I do a lot of my 2D product exploration in Illustrator. I used to be a dyed in the wool Photoshop guy until Illustrator 10 came out. I realized most of what I was doing in Photoshop could be done in Illustrator with files that were about a tenth the size and without the need for some other drawing tool – like Vellum. For me it’s all about getting to excellent results quickly.

Along the way, I became obsessed with the appearance palette. I think it’s a totally underrated tool and I haven’t found much written about it, but the example I’m about to share starts to show what it can do. Actually, I’ll start with something it can’t do. Or, at least – doesn’t do very well…

Let’s start with a square. Nothing special.

Next, go to Effects > Stylize > Round Corners. A predictable result.

But what about non-rectilinear shapes? A more common scenario in product design.

I took the square and yanked some of the control handles around just to make something funky. I don’t think I would design a product that looked like this…

Here I add the same Effect and, like you, I’m scratching my head. Why do I get this? Clearly this is not what that shape should have looked like with rounded corners.

This has been broken since Adobe introduced the “Round Corners” feature. Even the less flexible and more destructive “Filter” version of this tool does the same thing. So clearly they are just re-using the same broken code. There isn’t really any predictable way of adding corner rounds to a shape in Illustrator. I’ve played with Hot Door’s CAD Tools and have had mixed success in these situations too. So here’s my work around…

Start with the shape and add a Path Offset effect. set it to a negative number equaling your desired radius. Here, it’s -10 points.

It should look something like this.

Now we are going to “stack” some effects. This can be done by either choosing the effect again from the effect menu, or by selecting it right in the Appearance palette and selecting duplicate in the fly-out menu, or (as I do) just drag the FX layer down to the new/duplicate icon in the palette. Double click the duplicated FX layer and change the offset value from negative to positive. Also change the Joins type from Mitered to Round and boom, you have perfect radii on your shape.

You can save this as a “Graphic Style” and access it any time from the Styles palette. One thing to note though…

Obviously, this is only useful if all your rounds are the same radii. If you want to have different radii on each corner, I use the Expand Object command on a duplicate shape, change the offset values to the second desired radius and expand again. A little snipping together of the shapes will get you to your result. You lose the “live effect” aspect of it, but it’s the most accurate way of getting that particular result.

Lastly, here’s an example of how obsessive I can be with the Appearance Palette. Here are some connectors I’ve rendered. These are part of a library I keep handy so I can quickly populate a product design with all the right bits. They don’t use the above technique in particular, but the ideas are largely the same.

Each connector is completely rendered from just 2 circles (as shown at the far left). The reason I do this is simple; back in the day, when I used a ton of shapes to render simple objects, not only would my files become heavy and difficult to manage but, later – when I’d export my ideas to a CAD application like Alias, all that garbage would come with it and I’d have to clean-up everything I had done just to make the rendering look nice. This way, rendering entirely with the Appearance Palette, my render only consists of the two circles I care about when I get to CAD. It saves a ton of time in the long run is and is generally just easier to deal with.

It’s been a while since I last posted – looks like I’m averaging once a month – a far cry from once a week as my per my original goal. I’ll work on that.

Anyway, you know those lists that people make of the 10 or 20 things they have to do before they die? Well, I don’t have one of those. But if I did, one of the things that would have been on it was to see The Police play live – together.

Maybe one of the reasons I don’t have one of those list is because they they haven’t played since the mid 80′s and what’s the point in having a list with things on it that can never happen – or can they? Maybe I’ll reconsider that list.

Sting and the boys got back together and are touring this summer all over the world. I didn’t have a chance in hell of getting tickets and indeed didn’t have any until the day of the show when a friend of a coworker decided he wasn’t going to make it and I thusly happened upon some tickets. I had tried getting tickets the day they went on sale – but they sold out within minutes.

I went to the show in Seattle and it was fantastic. They sounded wonderful if not a bit rusty – but in a good way. They mixed it up just enough that us old time fans knew what was going on but weren’t bored for a minute. An in a very un-Seattle-like fashion, the crowd stood (yeah, on their feet!) and cheered them on for the entire set.

It seemed like every song went on forever and they entertained us with three encores – although, the intermissions between each were obviously just a ploy for a drink of water and possibly a quick discussion between a few 50-somethings about how nice the hotel bed will feel later.

Great show all in all – and while I won’t blather on about each song (they were all good, BTW) here is the set list from the show for your enjoyment…
It’s been a while since I last posted – looks like I’m averaging once a month – a far cry from once a week as my per my original goal. I’ll work on that.

Anyway, you know those lists that people make of the 10 or 20 things they have to do before they die? Well, I don’t have one of those. But if I did, one of the things that would have been on it was to see The Police play live – together.

Maybe one of the reasons I don’t have one of those list is because they they haven’t played since the mid 80′s and what’s the point in having a list with things on it that can never happen – or can they? Maybe I’ll reconsider that list.

Sting and the boys got back together and are touring this summer all over the world. I didn’t have a chance in hell of getting tickets and indeed didn’t have any until the day of the show when a friend of a coworker decided he wasn’t going to make it and I thusly happened upon some tickets. I had tried getting tickets the day they went on sale – but they sold out within minutes.

I went to the show in Seattle and it was fantastic. They sounded wonderful if not a bit rusty – but in a good way. They mixed it up just enough that us old time fans knew what was going on but weren’t bored for a minute. An in a very un-Seattle-like fashion, the crowd stood (yeah, on their feet!) and cheered them on for the entire set.

It seemed like every song went on forever and they entertained us with three encores – although, the intermissions between each were obviously just a ploy for a drink of water and possibly a quick discussion between a few 50-somethings about how nice the hotel bed will feel later.

Great show all in all – and while I won’t blather on about each song (they were all good, BTW) here is the set list from the show for your enjoyment…