Professional Still Life Photography: Complete Guide from Pre-Production to Post-Production

Jack Pickerill
2 days ago
4 min read

Introduction:

In this blog post we will go behind the scenes on a still life photography shoot for Manchester based sleeping mask and silk pillow brand Dreamsilk.

Pre production planning

Before every shoot we do, we discuss the following with the client:

Shot list

How many images?

This is important so we can gauge the clients expectations and so we can ensure that we book enough studio time in to get everything shot on the day.

Where are the images going to be seen?

Knowing the purpose of the images we will make can influence a lot in production. For example if we know that the shots will be used in e-commerce only, we might assume that as the images will be more likely to be seen all in a row next to each other on site, consistency from shot to shot is something that the client may need. If the shoot was only for social media, this is unlikely to play as much of a part and instead the focus may be more on styling and making images stand out to grab attention on social feeds.

For this shoot, the client wanted the shoot to be split between e-commerce photography for the Dreamsilk online store and creative assets for their site and socials.

Creative shoot planning

Some brands begin to plan their shoots long before approaching photographers and will only approach a photographer or photography studio once a clear plan has been made.

Other brands can be more flexible and will approach the photographer whilst still in the ideas stage and ask them to provide artistic direction on the shoot.

For this shoot I showed the client a mood board containing a shoot I did previously for another brand in the same market as a reference and we agreed that a similar set up would work well for the Dreamsilk sleeping masks.

E-commerce Shoot planning

For the e-commerce shoot the brand needed 3 shots per item. They wanted everything shooting on a white background with every image cut out in post production so everything can sit transparently on the site.

Production

Production schedule

Now we have an idea of shot complexity and timings, we ask the client what the order of priority is here, so we can ensure that the most important work is top of the agenda and is shot first. In this case the e-commerce work couldn’t wait as they had to be ready for the site launch earlier than the social posts were scheduled to go out.

Equipment & Lighting

For this shoot we used a Nikon D850, a 110mm Macro lens and 4 strobes on each set with 2 rolls of diffusion material used to create a softer quality of light and lesson any remaining wrinkles in the silk material.

Workflow

An organised workflow plays an essential role in professional photo shoots. We always shoot tethered to a laptop or monitor to ensure the client is happy with the images before moving on to the next shot. Tethering also helps us organise and rate files as we shoot so that every selected shot can be easily found for post production. All of the tethering process is carried out in Capture One.

Imperfections

To tackle imperfections in the product and props, these items are essential on every still life set:

Iron or steamer for creases in fabric - this was extra important on our shoot as we were working with all silk products
Lint remover
Dust blower

This helps to minimise removal of dust and scratches in post production.

Post Production

Image selection and culling

Because we took care on set to rate and review images as they come in this part of post production was successfully avoided! This is one of the many benefits of having somebody from the brand on set.

Colour Grading

At the end of every shoot we take a grey card and colour checker reference image. This is to ensure that all of the products colours are represented accurately. We then take this reading and use it to set white balance and calibrate our cameras icc profile.

Once this process is complete we export the selected files as high resolution tiff files ready to retouch in photoshop.

Retouching

The Retouching process is when we make the finishing touches to the shoot before sending them over to the client. In this case the bulk of the retouching time was spent reducing the creases on the silk fabric which didn’t iron out totally on the day.

Exporting files and formats

The final step in post production is simply exporting the files in the clients desired format, in this case as hi resolution JPEGS and PNG files.

Final delivery and client communication

After the export I sent the files over to the brand and checked they were happy with everything.