“Different” is eye-catching.
I like to create stacked compositions in my commercial photography to enhance that. It can be cheesecakes floating over other cheesecakes, or looking down from 25 feet up as a client’s hardware cleans the carpet of a “restaurant floor” we built in the studio, and more. Exploiting these unusual perspectives are design elements add to your product’s viability.
The Build
In this image there are 4 distinct layers seen from directly overhead. First is a green-speckled paper background laid flat upon a table. On the paper is a layer of glass beads like those we see in artificial flower arrangements and other uses. I bought enough to fill a large freezer bag and spread them all over the paper with gaps in the coverage to provide more variety in the background texture.
Then, 4 heavy-duty cardboard tubes, 3” in diameter and 4” tall were placed at the corners of a piece of 24”x24” optically clear glass 3/16” thick. Once the tubes were lined up, I positioned the glass after first making sure it was smear and smudge-free.
On another table, I had already worked out the arrangement of the dishes to be photographed to provide an interesting composition that also showed all the shapes.
Lighting the set
Next, the set needed to be lit for photography. Obviously, the dishware is the point and must look great. But, to not ruin the floating effect by allowing light to reflect in the glass sheet, I placed large light sources – 50” square to camera right and 42” to camera left. There were white reflective cards placed on the remaining sides as well.
Once satisfied with how the china looked, it was time to light the glass beads so that they were a part of the composition, yet not competing with the dishes for attention. This was accomplished by first using black cards to block much of the main lights from striking under the glass shelf. Then a single strobe light with a snoot and a light green gel was positioned so that it threw just the right amount of illumination into the center and top right to provide texture and shape behind the subject. I experimented with several different positions, angles, and distances for the snooted light before finding this one, the one that worked!
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