Commercial Photography

Commercial Photography

 The Brief

Food advertorial

Learning outcomes:

1. Analyse a specific commercial market in response to a client brief.

2. Discuss cultural, moral and legal restrictions of affecting specialism.

3. Apply creative solutions to a portfolio of photography.

4. Appraise contemporary practices relevant to commercial photography, appropriate to specialism.\

Commercial Photography:Commercial photography involves taking pictures for commercial use: for example in adverts, merchandising, and product placement. Commercial photography is also used in corporate brochures and leaflets, menus in cafes and restaurants, and similar commercial uses where photographs enhance a text. Commercial photography is used to promote or sell a product or service. 

http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/how-tos/becoming-a-professional-photographer/what-is-commercial-photography.html#b


Food Advertorial:
ad·ver·to·ri·al  (dvr-tôr-l, -tr-)

n.

An advertisement promoting the interests or opinions of a corporate sponsor, often presented in such a way as to resemble an editorial.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Advertorials



Notes from lecture 25th september

. Advertorial -
. Portmanteau - something that combines 2 things or skills
. food must be regional, a lancashire heritage food.
. Artisan - A small scale, creative, specialist, non commercial business.
for research:
. Richard Moran - food heroes (editorial)
. David Loftus (editorial)
. Kevin Summers (advertorial)
. Rob Lawson (advertising)


Lancashire foods

Outlets
Booths Supermarkets – Preston Bury Market
Bashall Barn – Clitheroe Huntlys – Salmesbury
Barton Grange - Garstang
Beers
Thwaites – Blackburn Moorhouses – Burnley Lancaster Brewery
Three B’s – Blackburn
Old School Brewery – Warton Bowland Brewery – Clitheroe Hawkshead Brewery Ulverston Brewery
Tyrrills Brewery – Cumbria Jennings Brewery – Cockermouth
Regional brands
Vimto
Uncle Joes Mintballs
Fishermans Friend
Pataks
Swizzles
Real Lancashire Eccles cakes
Lancashire Sauce
Fiddlers Lancashire crisps
Hollands Pies
Potts Pies
Mrs Kirkhams Cheese
Grandma Singletons Dairy (Parlick cheese) Dewlay Lancashire Cheese
Bowland Spring Water
Bowland Milk
Ingredients
Samphire
Salt Marsh Lamb
Black Pudding
Morecambe Bay Potted Shrimps 

"Lancashire is the origin of the Lancashire hotpot, a casserole dish traditionally made with lamb. Other traditional foods from the area include:

• Black peas, also known as parched peas: popular in Darwen, Bolton and Preston.
• Bury black pudding has long been associated with the county. The most notable brand, Chadwick's Original Bury Black Puddings, are still sold on Bury Market,^[68] and are manufactured in Rossendale.
• Butter cake: slice of bread and butter.
• Butter pie: a savoury pie containing potatoes, onion and butter. Usually associated with Preston.
• Clapbread: a thin oatcake made from unleavened dough cooked on a griddle.
• Chorley cakes: from the town of Chorley.
• Eccles cakes are small, round cakes filled with currants and made from flaky pastry with butter, originally made in Eccles.
• Faggot: savoury duck
• Fag pie: pie made from chopped dried figs, sugar and lard. Associated with Blackburnand Burnley, where it was the highlight of Fag Pie Sunday (Mid-Lent Sunday).
• Fish and chips: first fish and chip shop in northern England opened in Mossley, near Oldham, around 1863.^[69]
• Frog-i'-th'-'ole pudding: now known as "toad in the hole"
• Frumenty: sweet porridge. Once a popular dish at Lancashire festivals, such as Christmas and Easter Monday.
• Goosnargh cakes: small flat shortbread biscuits with coriander or caraway seeds pressed into the biscuit before baking. Traditionally baked on feast days like Shrove Tuesday.
• Jannock: cake or small loaf of oatmeal. Allegedly introduced to Lancashire (possibly Bolton) by weavers of Flemish origin.
• Lancashire cheese has been made in the county for several centuries.^[70] Beacon Fell traditional Lancashire cheese has been awarded EU Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status.^[71]
• Lancashire oatcake, resembling a large oval pancake, eaten either moist or dried
  • "Stew and hard": a beef and cowheel stew with dried Lancashire oatcake
• Nettle porridge: a common starvation diet in Lancashire in the early 19th century. Made from boiled stinging nettles and sometimes a handful of meal.
• Ormskirk gingerbread: local delicacy that was sold throughout South Lancashire.
• Parkin: a ginger cake with oatmeal.
• Pobs or pobbies: bread and milk.
• Potato hotpot: a variation of the Lancashire Hotpot without meat that is also known as fatherless pie.
• Ran Dan: barley bread. A last resort for the poor at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century.
• Rag pudding: traditional suet pudding filled with minced meat and onions.
• Sad cake: a traditional cake that may be a variation of the more widely known Chorley cake that was once common around Burnley.
• Throdkins: a traditional breakfast food of the Fylde.
• Uncle Joe's Mint Balls: traditional mints produced by William Santus & Co. Ltd. in Wigan.^[72]"

Section taken from the lancashire wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire#Cuisine

Map of the region

New map

old map of Lancashire

Vimto

Vimto is a soft drink from Manchester, United Kingdom.
It was originally produced in 1908 as a form of cordial by John Noel Nichols.
It is made up of the juice from grapes, blackcurrant's and raspberries in a 3% concentration.
The original name for the drink was Vim Tonic but was later shortened to Vimto in 1912.
Vimto was previously sold and trademarked  as a medicine.

Image from google search.

Vimto is now sold around the world and has been made into many other products including sweets, fizzy drinks, ice lolly also with other flavors such as cherry vimto.

Vimto website - http://www.vimto.co.uk/

Pack shot: A packshot (also pack shot) is a still or moving image of a product, usually including its packaging and labeling, used to portray the product's reputation in advertising or other media. It is an important stimulus to sales, with the goal of triggering in-store, on-shelf product recognition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packshot

http://www.thepackshotpeople.co.uk/packshots.aspx?gclid=CNSe6cHqlboCFbHItAodH3cAeg

Found Vimto Pack shots:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=vimto+packshot+photography&espv=210&es_sm=91&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Y6JbUom4II350gXIzICACw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1012&bih=890

I can see from these images that pack shots need an overall clean soft lighting with the highlights in just the perfect place, as to best show off the correct color and look of the object and give the viewer a feel for what they are purchasing.
The pack shots are on a plain white background so as to not draw the eye away from the product itself and give the images a clean clinical style for observation of the product itself.
There are next to no shadows and the images are crisp sharp.

interview with product photographer Robb Grimm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sYyOuc9RJo

Lighting set ups for pack shots

How to light beer/dark liquids in a glass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbwDgb9TWeg

Advanced look at lighting glass bottles and editing composites together in photoshop.

Lighting  - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhU3jbwDCa4

5 lights: 1 acting as a backlight to light the glass, 1 strip light to add the correct highlights in the glass, 2 above to bring out the green of the bottle and one to the front to add some fill light to the label.

outcome:

Bottle sprayed with water to make it look cold:

Editing - Part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRlUrqswjyg
               Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9s0v10dN7A


Tim Martin.

Tim Martin is a Wedding, Portrait and Commercial photographer.
He does pack shots and more.

Here is an example of one of his pack shots.

He has used pattern and colour to add interest to the image. it appears to be lit with 24 soft boxes 2 to either side one above and one to the front of the bottles. These images show well both the product logo and make the content of the product seem tasty and vibrant with the lighting the photographer has used to make the colour of the liquid really pop out.


Lighting a wine glass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONhrvrMc6LE

Behind the scenes of a food photographer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8erHupe_m-M

Props:

Acrylic ice.

I brought some acrylic crushed ice to use in my shoot as it does not melt it is a good alternative to real ice but requires very good lighting to look real.

my vimto shots

Vimto overview

After reading over the brief some more and shooting my vimto images, I found that the vimto bottles were awful to light and photograph the images didn't look very professional at all and even after research into what the companies actual pack shots look like I also found them to be very bad.
The brief requires to have an image of the product where it is made and/or produced so I figured picking something else would be my best choice and course of action.  After a lot of research on lancashire foods I decided to go with Morecambe bay potted shrimps, being my local specialty I figured these would be the best to do, they are visually impressive as well as providing me with many ideas for set up and props etc etc.

A short history on potted shrimps

Morecambe bay shrimps have been caught for hundreds of years across the coast, at the beginning hand nets were used on a pole and pulled through the shallow water this began to get dangerous as fishermen were being pulled out and swept away by the tide so they began to use horses dragging nets up to 10 feet wide across the shallows. This later became replaced by the use of a tractor and trailer. The tractor and trailer could pull 2 nets instead of 1 and was much safer and more productive.












Potted shrimp research.

        I scanned the internet for some images to give me ideas for props etc. all of these are from google image search under potted shrimps, I struggled to find any photographers specializing in potted shrimp photography.

- Potted shrimps are often potted with a layer of butter which adds a nice gleam to the images, here a simulated soft natural lighting has been used, i cant see in the catch lights there there is possibly a soft box either side of the shrimps just slightly behind them

I have noticed a recurring theme of natural slates and woods being used within these images, the natural textures compliment the bread and toast often used as a prop for a traditional shrimp tea, very nicely.

looking at these images I have found many serving suggestions for potted shrimps and have decided on a traditional shrimp tea with toast and some nice cutlery I would like to add some nautical netting to add a fishery feel to the images and give notice to where the food comes from.

The brand of potted shrimps I have chosen to work with is Edmundson's, yorkshire street, morecambe.
I would like to get some context shots of shrimpers on boats/tractors.

Although this image is not of a morecambe bay shrimp I like this style of close up imagery and would like to use some of this to show the detail in the object I am photographing. Using a macro lens and a shallow depth of field.


Link to Pinterest mood board:

http://www.pinterest.com/nicolamakepeace/commercial-photography/


I would like to go with a nautical style theme for my images taking a traditional photograph of morecambe bay and using it as a mood board style thing, taking the colors and textures from the image and producing a food image in that style.

Some images I have looked at for moods and colors

Morecambe bay (Flickr - Jenny Mackness)

Morecambe bay boat (Flickr - HareBrain9)

Boat on Morecambe Bay (Flickr - Paulo Dykes)

Eamonn Mcgoldrick

http://www.eamonnmcgoldrick.com/

Eamonn is an Irish photographer based in Scotland, his specialism is portrait and commercial,
he studied to be an engineer at university and after a successful career in factory management changed to photography as a profession, he turned professional in 2003.

his images use the traditional shallow depth of field approach to food photography, simple yet affective set with just a hint in the background of a restaurant scene. He has combined seafood that compliment each other in colors oranges and grey's of seafoods, and props that are very minimalistic.

Pohuski

http://www.pohuski.com/seafood.shtml

Micheal has been involved in photography his whole life, he is the son of a photographer and went on to study at the university of Maryland. He is well known for his use of dynamic lighting in stills and an artistic view to his motion pictures.

Like most food photography this has a clean and fresh feel, i like the way that the photographer has carried the composition through the back of the image and given it a run through type of feel in the second image.

Lighting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5_GdArDk9U

Food photography tutorial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7t_FfKFKmk

food photography without expensive gear

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOP_9eSZkos

Andrew decarlo advanced food photography

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kDkGoDIyfQ

Nicole Young food photography podcast

Props list

- Knife

- Plate

- Nautical decor e.g. net, floats

- Jar..?

- samphire

- toast

- glicerine

- shells

- Pebbles

- rocks

- seaweed?

- slate?

- Wood

Potted shrimp images

                 Potted shrimp pack shot, I have strayed away from the traditional white background of pack                  shots and given it a rustic wooden background to fit with the theme of ocean/boats/seaside.

In this image I have used the shallow depth of field style that I found is used a lot in food photography during my research, I have used warm tones when editing to mimic the warm colours of the wood and give a traditional shrimp tea after a cold day at work feel to it.

Here I have experimented with close ups to show the texture of the shrimp themselves and really make the viewer want to eat the shrimp.

This shot was taken on Morecambe bay around where the shrimping boats are kept, to show the place where the shrimp come from. I have included the shrimp themselves using natural light and the natural colours that I liked from my research to make the viewer feel engrossed in the environment.

Here I have just added a few experimental shots of where the product comes from around morecambe bay keeping the cool blues and deep browns associated with the british fishing industry.

To summarise.

I have enjoyed looking into the field of commercial photography during this brief. I learned how difficult lighting can be in commercial photography, I have enjoyed the challenge and the puzzle solving. If I were to shoot this project again I would love to experiment more with other props, as well as lenses for this project I used my Nikon D3000 with a standard 18-55mm lens I would like to experiment with macro lenses and wide angle lenses for a different take on food photography.

I would also like to look into drinks photography as I love the array of colours there are to choose from.

I do think my images work well for this project with the simple background however I would have liked to use more props, Samphire is hard to find this time of year and I would love to use some of that as well as fishing net in my imagery.