Product Photography – Polaroid – Dilyan Karaivanov

It all starts with the most fundamental element in photography, i.e., LAZINESS. Driven by laziness, I had to come up with a spectacular and fast way to shoot "flying" objects without having to spend hours assembling individual shots into one using Photoshop.

We will be shooting sunglasses.

For this purpose, we need:

1. 2 pieces of LERBERG trestles for desk from Ikea
2. A piece of transparent plexiglass with a thickness of 8-10 mm and dimensions of 50x70 cm
3. 3 studio flashes – choice from here:
4. 1 softbox 60x90 cm
5. 1 color filter yellow (blue, red – depends on the situation)
6. 1 reflector 18 cm with barndoors + honeycomb
7. Colored cardboard 70x100 cm
8. Tripod with the possibility to mount the camera from below – choice from here:
9. Camera – choice from here:
10. Macro lens – in my case, 100 macro – choice of lenses from here:

The lighting setup and viewpoint have been conceptualized; it's time to put them into practice. Here's the initial diagram with two softboxes and an 18 cm reflector with barndoors and grid:

Diagram 1

Powers, distances, and angles

• The object is in the middle of the glass, at a 45° angle
• Table height – 74 cm (for LERBERG model)
• Glass to background – 40 cm
• Grid with barndoors – 2/6, 90° horizontally, 75° towards the background, 100 cm height (on the tripod)
• Left softbox – 1/6
• Right softbox – 3.2/6

Here the "problems" begin.
Image 1 clearly shows that the glasses reflect a large part of the studio.

The easiest solution is to rotate the softbox by 90 degrees.

Here is the result. We are almost done!

We add a yellow filter to the background light, increase the background light by 1 stop, and recompose.

We still have a problem – image 3. The glasses still reflect part of the studio.

We move the right softbox slightly forward, and the glasses to the right and rotate them slightly, then recompose. We don't like the background. So we add a golden background to give the photo more warmth. The background is still not "warm" enough, but we don't have another one available.

We have a problem again! The left softbox and the angle from which we view the object create a reflection in the plexiglass that we don't like.

We replace the softbox on the left with a white reflector, which only subtly outlines the shape of the frame, without being as "intrusive" as in image 4; the parasitic glare also disappears!

Diagram 2

Hooray! We are ready. The reflector emphasizes the back of the frame with a soft yellow light coming from the background illumination! Some minor changes are needed, which we will make in Photoshop.

Just in case, we also shoot a frame without a color background and filter.

We start with the corrections. This is what our file looks like.

Duplicate the layer. We will use the top layer 1 for the glasses later, and the other for the background.

On the bottom layer, which we will use for the background, we apply a Surface Blur filter.

We further brighten the image using curves.

Add a new layer, fill it with color, and change the blending from Normal to Overlay.

Now we have a bright sunny background for our glasses.

On the layer we will use for the glasses themselves, we make a quick mask, and all that's left is to retouch the problem areas.

Add the manufacturer's logo.

Add an adjustment layer with a mask that affects only the blue rubber parts!

We're done!

Dilyan Karaivanov
See more about the author and his work here: https://www.zing-studio.com/