For the past 5 weeks i’ve been working for a friends Dads who owns a wine equipment business. Every Tuesday i’ve been slowly photographing his stock which will then be put into the new online store. Ive never taken photos in a ‘studio’ environment so i did some research before the first shoot.

Youtube was the first place i looked followed by a few blogs here and there. A few days before i checked out the photography equipment that the business had bought from China. I did a mock setup and tested the lights as well as the settings on my Camera (Canon 6D). It was quite a DIY set up. I taped white flute-board to table against the wall. I then and curved another  one so it ran from the base of the flute-board to the wall, showing no corner. By doing this, the items photographed would appear to be on an infinite white plane.

For consistency i set the camera to manual and placed it on a sturdy tripod. I also followed these guidelines i made from previous tests

• The white balance was set to fluorescent lighting mode
  • To balance the colour temperature
• The relative aperture to was kept within f/4 to f/11
  • To hide the detail of the fluteboard
• Exposure time was kept within 1″ and 1/5 (of a second)
  • To balance the light levels  when adjusting the f-stop for larger items
• The focus was set to manual
  • Autofocus cant be trusted in studio setting
• I used a remote to take the photos
  • if i pressed the button on the camera to take the photo it would have come out blurry due to the fast shutter speed
• ISO set to 100
  • No need for high ISO

I would systematically tick off each product as i took a photo, changing the settings depending on how white the object was in comparison to its background.

After the photo shoot i would then go home and edit the photos on Photoshop. This was a tedious process. I would have to applying colour correction to each individual photo (i created shortcuts), then have to tinker with the levels to get the blueness out of the whites. Before exporting i had to change the name of the photo to match the products name in the system.

On reflection I feel like this project was a stepping stone and a good learning process. This would be an easy way of making money form small businesses that need semi-professional photos taken of their product.