I've learned quite a bit about Tabletop (Product) Photography in the past few weeks. I mean, I must have learned because I think my pictures have gotten better. I'm also getting faster at it.
Here are some I took for my Etsy Shop today.
The spools of thread are from my grandmother's sewing box. I like them for holding up cupcake toppers because they're all ready (they were born ready). Having to make a batch of cupcakes, and then get them frosted, is usually enough to make it so that zero pictures get made. By the time I've done all that, and have the cupcake toppers ready, it's tomorrow, if you know what I mean. I got the toothpicks to stand without wobbling by putting a small piece of clay on the bottom of the toothpick and then putting it down the spool.
In these photos I learned:
- Use a macro lens. My camera setup (Olympus EPL-2) came with a macro lens that screws on to the end of the regular lens. I think the lens is the reason I got the nice, shallow depth of field. Depth of field, meaning that the stuff in back is really blurry.
- If you want a shallow depth of field and have control of the situation, put the background objects way back. It looks like the other spools are kind of close...they're about 14 inches behind.
- For these shots, I like having a patterned piece of paper on the table and a coordinating plain piece behind. I think it looks casual, which is nice here. I used the setup my husband made for me (more on that later) to hold up the paper behind and let it sweep to the table, then I let the back of the piece that is flat on the table overlap the background piece a bit. (The basketballs are shot on my paper cutter. Remined me of a wood basketball court).
- If your paper is light in color, and you feel that the table is showing through, or if light is showing throught too much, put a piece of large, white bristol board under or behind. (More on bristol in a minute).
- It may not be the same for your camera, but for mine, if I want a nice, bright photo, I set the shutter speed slow enough so that the meter on the camera indicates they're a bit overexposed. This is a consistent thing for me, and it's so much better to have the picture pretty well exposed the way I want it (even then, I always adjust the levels in Photoshop a bit) than it is to really have to try and fix it in Photoshop.
- Give the Auto Color correction in Photoshop a try. Sometimes I don't like what it does, but it's often great and gives an "aha" moment when you realize that the problem with the picture is that the color was off.
Here are some images of (and made with) the tabletop photopgraphy setup I was talking about -- my husband made it for me. This allows me to hang a single piece of paper as a sweep (both of these pictures are like that, the background and the foreground are the same piece of paper, and the paper arcs down to the table in a gentle, seamless curve) or it allows me to hang a background, like in the cupcake topper pictures, or it allows me to position a piece of white bristol to reflect light (still coming on the bristol). This has really improved my setup, as before I was trying to create the same situation by taping my papers to whatever I had on hand -- they were always falling down, or curving down at the top corners, it was kind of a pain in the neck.
That brings me to another thing, start collecting large pieces of paper. My solid pieces are Canson Papers that you can find in a variety of colors at the art supply store, they are about 25 x19 inches. If my object is fairly small, I can use this single sheet as a sweep. As I mentioned, these are the papers I like to use as backgrounds, and they are also papers I often use if I am taking an overhead shot of something, or a shot at a low angle, like these Pinewood Derby Pit Passes.
For larger sweeps, to use as the paper on the table as I mentioned with the cupcake toppers, or if I just want a patterned paper, I use and collect handmade papers. These are a little harder to come by, since as far as I know, they don't have papers like this at Michaels or AC Moore, or Pat Cataan's or other chain arts and crafts stores I can think of. There's an art supply store in Annapolis that has a selection of papers I love, it's called Art Things. Pearl art supply store (there are a handful of locations Washington DC area, I think it's really called Pearl Paints) has nice papers also.
These papers are often very large, maybe 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall. They usually come home from the store in a roll but I don't like to keep them rolled -- having your papers show slight creases from being rolled or having them curl up at the edge makes things more difficult, to be sure. I describe how I store them flat in this post about how to store big paper.
Bristol Board is something I can't do without. It's not really board, but they call it board, I don't know why. It's like a big piece of white cardstock and comes about 20 sheets or so to the pad. I buy 19x24 inches. I use it for a sweep where I want all white (it is a very clear, white color), I use it behind or under papers that are showing through a bit (as I mentioned), I use it if I want a white background, and I use it if I'm getting too harsh of a shadow - I set it up beside the object, opposide the window, to reflect some light and soften the shadow. In short, I use it a lot.
I'll end this post by saying that I always use natural light, and the light isn't as bright as you might think. It lights the room, lights the table, that is all. It's not harsh or overly bright. If the light it too harsh, I tape white paper over the windows, but I really have to have a photograph NOW to do that, it's kind of a pain in the neck. I usually shoot in the afternoon, so it's better to just wait for the sun to go down a little more. My rule of thumb is this -- if I can look at my paper, and see shadows from the spots on the window on the paper, then the light is too much. I wait.
I hope this post has been useful to you, I just dreaded taking pictures with my DSLR when I started out but it's getting much, much easier (and more fun) now.
Friday, March 8, 2013 
