How i made the “Fructis” image

How i made the “Fructis” image

I decided to make this image for my product portfolio, I think it is important to build images with total creative freedom, without having to follow a customer’s needs, because thais  way we can experiment and look for new concepts.
I already had the Fructis champoo containers in the studio for a long time to make an image with them and also had the mirrors even longer, so I decided to make this image inspired by other images with the same concept that I think I had already seen .
I tried to make the image in a simple way, I used only two flashes, the cheap ones, I didn’t use a last generation camera, although the lens used is, for me, one of Canon’s best EFs, but I was careful to do everything the best i could  right at the time of capture, to facilitate the editing work, to be able to make the image as I wanted.
The process of creating this image proves that we don’t need the latest equipment to make the images we want, because more important than the equipment is knowing exactly what we want to do and how we want to do it.

Preparation  
Before I started shooting and setting the scene, I had to clean the mirrors very well, and even then I still had to clean some dust during editing.
I also cleaned the shampoo containers as best I could.
For the final image I wanted to photograph the three packages at the same time, but since they were all different, only one was in Portuguese, I ended up having to move the Portuguese packaging to the other positions.

Light
As I said, I used only two stob lights, the cheap ones.
The cheapest flashes are ok to make this kind of images, although they have some problems, thats way they are cheaper, perhaps the most serious of all is the lack of consistency in the color temperature, it is normal to have some images with a color temperature completely different from the previous shot, although it can be corrected, it is more time that we have to waste in editing. Another problem is when we need to freeze motion, which is not possible with cheaper flashes because they are not fast enough to reach maximum power and are also not quick to switch from maximum light to completely off, for those more demanding jobs the ideal will be to work with top quality lights like Broncolor or at least with an intermediate solution with a good quality / price ratio like Godox.
In the case of this image, the light modifiers I used were a plastic plate in the back light and a sheet of parchment paper in the main light.

Photographic gear
I used my loved Canon EOS 5DMkIV, it is not the latest technology, it is certainly not a Canon EOSR5, but it is a versatile cam that I can use both in the studio and at concerts, and it is a cam capable of producing images with excellent quality, I could have done this image with the 5DMkII, which is still a cam capable of making images with great quality in the studio.
The lens I used was the Canon EF 100mm f / 2.8L Macro IS USM, a lens that I love and that I know that always makes sharp images.
You don’t see it in the making of video, but to build the light I used the sekonic Flashmeter L-358, I’m not strict about the values of the light, but I like to start making the light using the Flashmeter, to know exactly how the light is, but then, when I feel the need, I adjust it to taste, until I reach a light that I like.
To control the colors I used the X-rite Colocheker.

Photographing all parts
To make the final image I started by making an image with all the packaging in its place, but then, because only one of the packages was Portuguese, I photographed the shampoo´s in each of the mirrors.
I also photographed the mirrors without the shampoo´s, in case i need to edit, which turned out to be useful since I had to move the shampoo´s from one mirror to another and I chose to use the image of the mirrors without the shampoo´s as the background.
Whenever I do product photography I always try to make a background image without the products (back Plate) in case it is necessary to delete something or make any last minute changes.

Edition

The editing of this image was a little messy, I usually see the images I have, I choose the ones I will use and I am alredy getting an idea of the editing process, however, this time I was making the levels and color adjustments, in CaptureOne and I exported to Photoshop as i was doing it, without seeing all the images, so I wasted some time cleaning images that I ended up not using, especially the mirrors without the shampoo´s, which I decided to use near  the end of the edition.
The ideal is to make the selection of the images first, to understand which are the best images to use so that the editing process is faster and more fluid.

Here is the video of the shooting and editing.
The video has 10 minutes, this is in accelerated speed, only the editing process took 1: 25hcontainer