Medifast Cookbook Shots

We had a great time shooting a cookbook for Medifast just before Thanksgiving.  Lisa Cherkaski was the food stylist and as usual did a spectacular job.  Paul Meyers & Michelle Wise from Medifast styled some neat backgrounds.  We were able to shoot about 8 finals per day which surprised us all.

Here are three of them.  To see more, click on one of the images and it will take you to a web gallery.

Trout Unlimited Pocket Knife

This is a closeup of the studio set. If you look really hard, you can find the knife on the rocks. The card on the right is a silver reflector that is creating a highlight on the knife blade.

You can see the camera, lighting, and the capture station with dual monitors. The camera is tethered to the capture station.  Each shot is displayed on the large screens.

Here I am adjusting the angle of the knife so the scrim feathers light across the brass part of the knife. You don't want metal surfaces to be all white, or all black. That doesn't look like metal. Metal surfaces should be lit so they gradate from light to dark across their surface.

Original shot with the lighting perfect for the brass handle. However, the blade looks dull and lifeless.

I changed the lighting so the blade now looks great. Notice this lighting is terrible for the rest of the knife.

Final Image after compositing lighting "fix" to blade. We started with the first shot where the handle looks great, then added the blade from the "fix" shot.

Ingleside Vineyards Wine Bottles

 Ingleside Vineyards, a Virginia winery, asked us to shoot 16 bottles of wine for their website.

Since the bottles are glass, you are going to see reflections of the lights no matter what you do.  So the idea is to create reflections that are attractive and show the shape of the bottle.

  Here I have a large soft light box on the right to create the highlight down the front of the bottle.  A large white reflector is to the left of the bottle and positioned far enough away so it's barely visible on the glass.

Everything around the bottle has to be black or you will see stray reflections.  The white background is about 10 feet behind the bottle so it won't affect the lighting on the bottle.

The bottles are supported high above the black table surface to avoid unwanted reflections.

  I wanted a good glow to come through the bottle, but when the back light is increased in brightness, it creates a white fuzzy edge around the bottle.  So we shot two different exposures, changing the lighting for each.  One of those exposures was just the glow coming through the bottle.  In the other shot, the front of the bottle looks perfect.  The two images were then combined in Photoshop to create the final.

 

Here you can see how the reflection of the light shapes the bottles.

The Studio

Lobby area and gallery as you walk in.

Same area, different view.

We have a full kitchen for food shoots.

More of the kitchen and our two fridges.

View back toward the entrance.

Studio view showing about 3/4 of the shooting space.

Larry working on a set.

 Pete setting up a shot.

Setting up a shot for Max Factor.