On the surface of things, ecommerce photography would seem to be simple enough – especially when the shoots are in a controlled studio environment. But it’s often the surface of things that present the challenge – especially when the surfaces are glass, and the things are bottles.
And even more especially when your client is:
- The largest beer, wine, and sprits retailer in Australia;
- Expanding its online range to 20,000 products;
- Requiring high quality technical standards, specs, and rigorous quality guidelines to be met;
- Needing photographic image consistency throughout.
- Oh, and did I mention our own professional pride undertaking to receive, shoot, and turn around, and deliver top quality images for each and every new product within 5 business days?
So did it all come good? I’ll buy you a drink if it didn’t. Here’s how.
Let’s start with the surface of things. Wine bottle photography, and, for that matter, beer photography and spirits photography, requires fastidiousness attention to details if it is to be successful. Not only is glass naturally reflective, but the shape of the bottle affects the refraction. Putting it simply, when you photograph a bottle, it will reflect not only pretty much everything in front of it, but also everything around about a 240 degree radius. That includes, the camera, studio, photographer and especially, the light source. So experience and well refined techniques are vital.
And, of course, no two wine bottles are the same. Even if they are the same basic shape, there are still natural imperfections in the glass, imperfect seam lines, and differential reflections. Plus, the labels are different; and the light and exposure effects of shiny gold or silver labels in particular have to be compensated for. This requires multiple shots being taken – not just of the bottles, but also of the labels, which are then combined and stitched together in Photoshop afterwards.
Then there’s the colour, nature, and consistency of the beverage inside the bottle. Again, thought needs to go into how to best represent the colour in the most appealing way while still being true to the product.
And then there’s dust … it might seem like a small thing but, clean a bottle as many times as you will, there’s still dust on it afterwards. That is why we are as fastidious in our post production as we are in our set-ups and shoots. All our product photos are carefully retouched to rid the final images of any hint of dust or other imperfections on the glass.
That’s because, when it comes to ecommerce product photography, it isn’t just the surface of things that matter. It’s everything. Why? Because out aim isn’t just to be any ecommerce photographer in Sydney; it’s to be product photographers that understand we need to not only make your products look great but we need to maximise your sales.
So, was Dan Murphy’s happy with the results?
Client Testimonial:
“Until now we’ve used our in-house photography team and also relied on supplier images. We decided to outsource the photography in order to speed up the product upload cycles to our website.
Adrian Harrison Photography meet our high quality standards and deliver consistent results with minimal fuss. We recommend Adrian Harrison Photography to all of our suppliers for their photography needs.”
Matt Strutt
Business Development Manager, Dan Murphy’s
So, if you’re looking for a high quality wine bottle photographer, get in touch.