Product photography is a very unique field of photography, and one that Charles Nucci has specialized in. Sometimes, items seem to be made for photography and it is very easy to take their picture. But other times, this isn’t the case at all. Product photography must show detail, as it is designed to encourage people to purchase the item, and this can be more difficult than it looks.

Charles Nucci Reveals Product Photography’s Tricks of the Trade

If you have items that are reflective in any way, such as mirrors, metallic lighting fixtures, toasters, or kettles, but equally CDs and DVDs, then you need to be very careful. It is really hard to deal with a reflective item. Sure, you can set up a good back cloth and get your lighting right, which is quite difficult in and of itself, there are other problems as well. Those include:

1. The chance of seeing the reflection of the photographer or the equipment in the photograph.
2. The chance of the reflection causing the viewers to be distracted from the item itself.
3. The chance of there being some confusion about the reflections and the products.

According to Charles Nucci, almost every product that is photographed has some reflection to some degree. This is why he has a number of complicated tricks in his photography toolbox to ensure the items he shoots look natural and beautiful, without anything seeming out of the ordinary. He takes his pictures from different angles so that nothing is visible on the item. He also often takes them inside boxes, so that the surrounding room can’t be seen in the reflection. Lastly, he uses a duller light.

The second item that is difficult to shoot is jewelry, and particularly jewelry with gemstones. The way the camera sees an item is very different to that of the human eye. This is perhaps the hardest thing to come to grips with when first starting with product photography. People expect that, if something looks great in real life, it will look equally great on a photograph, but that simply is not the case.

When a photograph is taken of a diamond, for instance, it usually looks like glass. It is not possible to see the beautiful colors and sparkling reflections. Because a product photograph is meant to sell, this is obviously not a good thing. This is why, according to Charles Nucci, all product photographers need to have colored LED circles on top of their studio lighting. By encircling the diamond with these colored LEDs, the sparkles and colors of the diamond becomes much more apparent.

Last but not least, there is shooting hanging jewelry such as necklaces and bracelets. While these look best on a stand to the naked eye, they won’t look good on a picture. Instead, photographers will lay the stand down, or they will use invisible wires to seemingly hang them up and make them look more realistic.