For my specialist practice, I knew I wanted to focus primarily on using the studio for more controlled work. Being able to control a lot of the aspects of my work is how I work best, blending practical lighting and positioning with slight digital changes to polish is how I prefer to work and how I produce my best work. However, I did not want to limit myself to portrait photography as I feel that I would get bored and I wouldn’t be able to fully express what I wanted effectively.
This is when I came across the idea of doing product photography. I have some experience with product photography and generally enjoyed working on it previously. Semiotic analysis is something I find extraordinary and I really enjoy breaking down the components of what makes an effective advertisement.
What is Product/Commercial Photography?
Searching for a definition of product/commercial photography, I found the definition, “Product photography is any image of a good for sale. Sometimes known as commercial photography, these images are meant to entice shoppers to purchase the photographed products. They feature product details and features, supplemental to written copy and product descriptions.“
Product Photography Techniques
There are certain techniques that are associated with product photography in particular because of the ingenuity that comes with having to create interesting visuals for products that will lead consumers to purchase them. This means that product photographers need to show a product at its absolute peak and entice viewers with the visuals to best sell what they are advertising. Use of colour theory, sneaky tricks with editing and making use of what the consumer expects of the product can be used to the producers advantage. I will be listing some of my personal favourite tricks below with an explanation of how they are done.
- Using a 50/50 mix of water and vegetable glycerine to make bottles and cans look more cool and refreshing. Can be used on a wide variety of different things to make them look more fresh, typically used in summer advertising or on soft drinks and beers/lagers to emphasize the freshness and the idea of “cracking a cold one open”. Example 1, Example 2 and Example 3.
- Use various props, text blocks and backgrounds to add additional meanings and make the main subject make sense or add clarity to the message they are trying to get across. Some examples are adding flames to an image to emphasize the heat of the product, placing a product on marble to make it seem more high class and more luxurious and adding a tagline that sticks in your head to further incentivise you to purchase the product.
- Using a technique known in film as “Cloud Tanking” and in photography as “Aqueous” that utilises mixing food colouring and milk together and squirting it into a tank of water to create the effect of clouds. This is commonly used by one of my personal favourite advertising photographers Mark Mawson. This can be used to create colourful backgrounds and grab attention, as shown in Example 1, Example 2 and Example 3.
These are techniques I have personally used in my own photography and I plan to use them in the future in combination with my advertising to create interesting visuals.
Practitioner Research
Katie Howey
Katie Howey is a product photographer with a studio based in Essex. A quote from her website states that they deliver “rich, striking and impactful visuals for websites, social media, branded marketing and advertising through high-end bold visuals.” She has been specialised in product photography for the past 14 years and as of 2024 has been running her studio for 7 years for a wide variety of brands, such as Revolution Beauty, Umberto Giannini and Dizziak London.
From looking through her portfolio, her focus tends to be on creating using bold colours and clean backgrounds to capture attention to both keep focus on the product and present an idea of making things simple for the consumer. However, she does sometimes work with interesting visuals such as when she created a galaxy background and reflections in the floor for a self care brand. She also tends to theme the colour palette for the background with the product she is shooting, blending the colours while maintaining a distinction between them and the background through the use of shadows.
This is a rough attempt at using a Lynx bottle for a photoshoot. I used one of my favourite techniques for making items look appealing by spraying some water on the deodorant to make it look more cold and fresh. This is also follows the idea of keeping sweat away and mitigating it, showing water being kept out of the impenetrable can. This was then cut out from the background and a new background was created by sampling the colours from the bottle and pasting them in a triangle pattern. To make it appear as if there is a shelf in front that the deodorant is resting on I made the triangles on the bottom bigger so they seem closer.
Matching the background with the product helps a lot and can convey a lot of things. For example, the use of red presents boldness and confidence in the product, making the consumer believe that this will keep their body feeling fresh and preventing odour. This is a technique that I will most likely continue to use, matching the colour palette for the background to the product in the foreground. However, I may do this in more subtle ways as shown in the Aveeno advert seen previously.
Mark Mawson
Mark Mawson is an advertising photographer based in London who is most recognisable from his combinations of product and aqueous photography, stemming from his specialty of shooting still liquids and underwater scenes. His accomplishments include producing videos for live tours of Elton John and Shawn Mendez, U2’s eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE tour and The Queen’s diamond jubilee celebration. His “Aqueous” series has become iconic, taking an idea rooted in film known as “Cloud tanking” that originated from the famous Alfred Hitchcock sky scene in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.
Combining various coloured versions of this with the use of beautiful product photography and clean text usage, he is able to create stunning visuals that look almost ethereal. To discover how he is able to create these visuals, I emailed him directly and received a response. Both are shown below.
While I was not able to get any helpful response, I was able to find other resources that were linked above which showed that through the use of various liquids such as paint and ink, I could create very nice looking clouds. However, I found this very useful video that explains the benefits of using evaporated milk with food colouring to create a nice effect which I may try in the future. For now, I used acrylic paint and decided to use different colours to see if I could recreate the aqueous effect.
As you can see, the pictures came out quite well. I am especially happy with the primary colours picture. For this, I used the acrylic paint and got a friend to help me put the syringes containing the colours in a fish tank filled with water. I have also attempted using the evaporated milk as suggested in the video and this is how it came out.
This looks much better and created a much more consistent result of what I was looking for than the paint. The pastel colour the condensed milk creates when combined with the food colouring is very nice and it looks like silk. I am very interested in further pursuing this method of creating clouds with focus on a main object in a tub.
Martin Wonnacott
Martin Wonnacott is a British born drinks-focused advertising photographer based in New York City and London. He was born in England and has been practicing photography since the age of 9. He originally moved to London when he was 19 to further pursue this hobby more as a job and started his very own studio at age 23. He soon moved to New York in 1999 and, in his own words, has shot “shot virtually every sort of liquid form of refreshment for sale in the world.”
The style of advertising photography that Wonnacott uses cannot be summed up easily. He is able to create interesting visuals that hook you in through varied use of ideas, lighting, clever placement, models, focus and colours. His resume speaks for itself when you find that he has worked with big names like Budweiser, Sprite and Coca-Cola and has various other accolades such as 3 Webby awards and being on the Lurzer’s Archive 200 Best Ad Photographers Worldwide in 6 different years.