How We Got Into This Product Photo Hot Mess
Find out what happened when I teamed up with Art Director, Judith Aldama, to make advertising photography for Tabasco sauce. We met at a coffee shop to brainstorm and sketch ideas. One of our goals for the shoot was to create product photography that could be extracted from the original background and placed into a variety of advertisements. After a few Americanos and some tea we chose the best concept.
The next day we went prop shopping with my company credit card and a couple of lattes. After a few more lattes we vibrated back to the studio with the props and products for the shoot. With our hearts racing, we spent the next 2 hours building the set, lighting the scene, choosing the right camera angle and talking way too fast.
We experimented with different techniques for propping the shot. The best solution required that we photograph each of the items separately so we could control the layout of the advertisement. We were getting really into the shoot! There were socks flying, sheets of crumpled paper and the room temperature went to a high of 27 degrees Celsius.
Time for the Hollywood magic
OK, so we had the parts of the product photo – it was time for the Hollywood magic! We started the engaging (me)/tedious (her) process of post-production. We spent a few hours choosing the right images, creating masks and using Photoshop to remove defects from the Tabasco bottle – what, you think they are perfect when they come from the store? But that’s not all, we threw in the Ginsu knives, corrected the colours and adjusted the shadows and highlights. Then we cut a great looking bottle from the background.
The only thing left to do was drop the beautiful product photo into the illustrated background we created for the advertisement. And that takes us to our current dilemma.
While playing with one of the images in post, we saw the potential to feature the Tabasco bottle in a second advertisement. The dilemma is that Judith and I disagree on which background to use. Will you help us, you’re our only hope?
Vote for your favourite product photo in the poll.
PS – I’ll send a bottle of Tabasco sauce to someone that answers the poll
PPS – What’s your favourite way to use Tabasco sauce? Comment below.
PPPS – Have you ever taken a Tabasco sauce dare? What was it?
