Despite everyone’s best intentions, in some way every photo shoot has it’s share of surprises. And this one was no exception. The initial phone call went something like this:
“We have some great painted boots on a shelf in the store and want a photo to use in our print ads. And it needs to be photographed outside store hours, perhaps just before we open. Can you do that?”
“Yes, that certainly sounds doable, I’ll drop by the store tomorrow to have a look.”
So, in my optimistic head, I’m thinking, piece of cake. Might even be able to use available light; or possibly one reflector to bounce some window light.
The next day when I got to the store. I was surprised by a few things:
Thing One: the shelf was 12 feet off the floor
Thing Two: behind the shelf a strip of white wall and above that wood, a railing and another display; a distracting background
Thing Three: the boots were not on the shelf but on legs which hung below the white wall and in front of lights and the checkout station; more busy background
Thing Four: the sweaters on the shelf were last year’s colours, the new sweaters were not yet in stock, but needed to be advertised; there was a t-shirt in the store that was the “right colour”
Thing Five: there was a large hanging light 10 feet in front of the display, right where the camera needed to be
Thing Six: there were three colour temperatures at play
Photo shoots are never what you think they’ll be.
I arrived at the store with lights, lots of gear and plenty of time to finish the shoot and clean up before opening. The white background gave the company lots of layout options. Consequently the shot’s been used many times in different publications.
