Creative Product Photography at #FleaRetreat

In case you missed my previous post, I wrote about my trip to Croydon Hall in Minehead last weekend and my experience of The Flea Retreat hosted by Tots100.

One of the classes I really enjoyed was the Creative Product Photography taken by Derek Lomas.  I am not a huge fan of flat-lays. Don’t get me wrong, I do like them but I prefer the magazine-style look and this is exactly what Derek showed us.

One of the things that was regularly touched upon was the back light. Derek showed us this set up using a back light behind a roll of tracing paper held up on a coat rail. The item being photographed was then placed on a piece of white perspex. He recommend this light from Screwfix for the backlight: https://www.screwfix.com/p/diall-led-rechargeable-led-work-light-10w-12-240v/2587k The gin bottle also had a sidelight on it – and, to ensure that you could still see the label, he placed a piece of white paper behind the bottle – although you can’t actually see it in the photo.

I took photos using my Canon 80D camera with a 24-70mm lens on manual mode. The settings for the sunglasses were a shutter speed of 1/125 ISO 200 and an aperture of 3.5. The bottles with the water settings were a shutter speed of 1/5000, ISO of 6400 and aperture of 5.0. The gin bottle settings were a shutter speed of 1/50, ISO of 200 and 5.0 aperture.

Derek’s advice was amazing. It was easy to understand and informative. All the kit he recommended was inexpensive and everything he showed us wasn’t too difficult which made it easy for even the newest photographers to set up and use.

If you have any questions about the class and the techniques he used, then please do ask me in the comments below and I will my best to answer them for you.