Product Photography

Toy Car

I guess the next step in photographing close up is product photography consequently the ad in the sidebar. With the Internet having an international audience I am surprised more businesses do not trade on line. I guess there are a couple of problems first how do you get all your products photographed then load them to the Internet on a website? There is great opportunity for photographers in this area and one of the most important tools I guess as photographers we already have, the camera.

Most computers will have the ability to create a website using notepad or similar program on Mac, to write the HTML and CSS code. Special software such as Photoshop maybe required to save images to view on the web, a process that reduces the file size of the image however, takes very little away from the image quality.  Why worry about file size? How many times when you are browsing the Internet and a site takes too long to load, do you immediately click back and go to the next site on the search engines list? That is the difference the file size makes, the images will load faster.

Alternatively there is some great Open Source software such as Gimp, which will do much the same as Photoshop and costs nothing. Before spending exuberant amounts of money on software, it is best to see if there is an Open Source equivalent. Furthermore the most popular software for loading site content to a server would have to be FileZilla an Open Source program. Hosting, having a server host the site is reasonably cheap this is a cost however that would be passed on to the person requiring the site, in addition to the cost of the domain name, the name of the site. I registered petersproductphotography.com for $15 American. A site I have setup to do Product Photography in my local area of Sydney, the Bankstown, Liverpool and Fairfield area.

Watch Outs.

Problems I have encountered creating websites for other people.

They have a couple of thousand business cards made up with a website address they have not registered; only to find the domain name is already taken by someone else.

Too many cooks spoil the broth.

Creating a site for business partners can be a total nightmare, with one partner wanting a dark colour and the other wanting a light colour. Where possible design a site following one persons requests, not more than one it is just too difficult. Additionally accept one partner will never be happy with the site.

Web design can be a challenging area; I have a blog called Ardan’s Blog Talk, which deals with some of the design deficiencies of blogs, and general information about web design. Furthermore if you need help there are some great forums on the web where people are generally friendly and are quite willing to help. Alternatively post a comment here or contact me and I will see if I can help. 

Fly

Dragonfly and Spider with Friends

A trip to a local park was worth the effort for these shots, poor dragonfly!

How to take close up or macro photos of insects.

I purchased a Tamron SP 60mm F/2 Macro lens a week ago and found it is a great lens and easy to use, not that I have used other macro lenses to compare it to. The price ranges of some of what may be called specialty lenses are too expensive, for the novice photographer. Macro photography is an art of its own, search the net and you will find many articles on the subject, some give realistic advice and others give you what they have read in books or on the net and offer very little practical help.

Most do inform that yes you are shooting small objects, and that you need to hold the camera steady preferably with a tripod. This is great advice and I wish someone would let the butterflies and other insects know this, by the time you set up the tripod they are long gone, and yes although you may be quick enough to set up the tripod the wind is blowing and negates the steady tripods input to that elusive shot.

Where to start? First consider the depth of field you require, if you only want the eye of the inset a small aperture number may do, say around F2.5 to F5 this will give you a small area in focus and the rest blurred and at these aperture settings the shutter speed is relatively fast, which helps with hand shake or wind. Forget the tripod, in this age of digital photography you are not paying to get the film developed therefore if you want a great shot of the eye take as many shots just focusing on that area until the subject moves. 

Larger areas of focus require a larger aperture setting around F20 however because you are focusing on something so small sometimes the result you want may not be achievable. Key here is just take as many shots as you can whilst the subject is cooperating. With my limited knowledge in the area I doubt many photographers can get the shot they want with just one shot, I guess the professional’s take hundreds of photos and as with my blog for every shot that is posted maybe a dozen or more are sent to the recycle bin on the computer.

Unless you are being paid for your efforts, for most of us photography is a hobby and it is always challenging your ability so enjoy it, if you did not get the perfect shot today try again tomorrow. If you aimed your camera at a subject and got the perfect shot first time every time you would probably find it boring very quickly.

Not that I have mastered this area of photography yet, my next area will be telephoto photography, I would love to see what shots are achievable with a 500mm or 600mm lens, however as I have said maybe a little too expensive at the present time. So for now it will be macro, macro, macro ............ and loving it!

Awesome Dragonfly

The best picture I have taken so far with the Nikon D3100 and the Tamron macro lens.

Bee's

Thrip

I believe they are called Thrip they are so small and I was unable to use a tripod, as they were only about 5 inches off the ground. Now I need to look for a small tripod for these shots. Trying to still work out the best camera settings for these shots, these were taken with a fairly large aperture setting. Not to make excuses for the focus however it was windy. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to take shots in windy conditions?