In more recent photography related blogs I talked about my desire to improve upon my product shots that I utilise in my blogs and even on other social media channels. I engaged the help of my mate The Overrated Photographer as he takes amazing shots of his cameras and lenses for his own blogs over at his page here.  He also uses those shots for the blogs he shared with the Fuji X Aus community over at their new web site here.  Please be sure to check out those sites as they have fantastic Fujifilm related content and I have also been a contributor to both.  Anyway, back to the blog. In a recent blog which you can read here,  I took you through a basic step by step process of how I improved my game in taking such shots. In that blog, I only photographed my black Fujifilm X70 against a black background. Whilst a good starting point, I quickly found the desire to photograph more products with varying backgrounds and styles.

I have spent a lot of time this week using the same techniques I discussed in that last blog. But I was much more confident and was able to experiment with different lighting solutions, different backgrounds and also products made of different materials. A matt black camera is very different to photograph versus a shiny silver can of beer. Light bounces everywhere of that can. I also added a bit of a hack that was recommended to me by a photography peer. He suggested using aluminium foil, from the kitchen, to make light deflectors rather than buying them. I went one step up from this. I had a bunch of photo frames that my sister had recently given me. And I covered a couple of them, rough A4 in size, in aluminium foil.  And as they had that little stand at the back to help the frame stay upright, they were already at a perfect angle for deflecting light from the flash firing directly above them. Thanks Bernie. You know who you are.

I also paid a visit to a craft store and purchased some more card. I wanted to try varying colours. But mostly I wanted to get away from the moody use of black on black, just for a little while. Don’t get me wrong, I love the look but it is not suitable for everything. Back at home and I set up my Fujifilm EF-X20 flash inside the clamp on the Goddox soft box.  I won’t go into the specs as you can source that from last time here.  I was shooting with the Fufjifilm X-T2 on a tripod with the Fujifilm XF50mmF2. And I took lots and lots of photos of different products. This was a great test of what works and what doesn’t. I even made dinner and then served up my Lamb Massamam Curry in a nice bowl and took a product shot of it before devouring it. I am really happy with the progress I have made in such a short time. Certainly improved my Instagram game of food shots. And given that the weather outside at the moment is pretty crappy and uninviting, this is the perfect way to build upon my skills. I intend to keep working on this style and skill set to see where I can take it in my little home studio set up. Not much more to say other than hope you enjoy the shots. G