So, there you are with your camera, a wine bottle, a bottle opener and a client who expects perfection, which, after all is what his product is all about. What do you do?

Step One: pick your camera angle. This is where 90% of budding photographers/videographers go wrong! They set up their tripod, usually at the highest point or eye level, and they start to shoot. Each product demands a camera angle that best shows off its qualities, so you need to study what angle makes things looks good. Some things need a low angle and some a higher one. Your camera angle determines your lighting (rule #6), because where your camera stands affects how your camera "sees" the lighting. Once you have your camera position, you can start to set up your lighting.

The three basic terms for lights are main, key and fill. The main, as its name implies is your main light. It determines the overall lighting but not necessarily the type of lighting. The key light is the "money" light: it makes or breaks your lighting. The fill is just that: it fills in shadows.

With our wine bottle, the client wants a nice lifestyle shot that conveys the look of a tasting room in spring, so we will have a nice large main light from above. We are setting it from above to minimize any reflections the glass will produce. The reason for a larger main is that we want to make the set appear as though it's in a window-lit tasting room (just like the atrium shot we talked about). This is a 5' x 6' scrim about 3 feet above the bottle, with one light from above at about 5 feet from the scrim. It is very close to the set and provides lots of "wraparound" lighting. We made this scrim with synthetic drapery liner from the local fabric store. Synthetic drapery liner is very thin and creates nice highlights, but it allows too much of the actual light to reflect through. So we would not use it where its reflections would show.

We want a bit of "sunlight" to splash through those "expensive windows," so we are going to put a small key just above the set and to the left of camera. This key is a 2'-square, standard softbox, about five feet from the set. It's far away, so it looks like filtered sunlight, but not so far as to create a pinpoint light. The whole set needs a fill light, but, in order to fill in the lighting and create nice reflections, we need to move it to a place where it will look natural and not overwhelm or compete with the label (again, rule #6). We place it just to the right of the camera. This is a 5' x 6' scrim with a 2' black fabric right through the middle to create a window look. The light is about six feet behind the scrim and closer to the right side than the middle. We made this scrim of taffeta, also from the local fabric store. It is much denser than the drapery liner and therefore produces very nice reflections in the glass. The black fabric is simple rip-stop; we placed it to create a "shadow" or "minus reflection" just right of the logo. Without it, the reflection would be too big and overwhelming.

Now, everything looks good but that bottle opener. It's too dark (rule #5). This is where you earn your money. Yep, the dark wood of the handle is just about as dark as can be, so we need a special little light just for that. But it needs to look natural, not contrived, and it cannot contaminate the rest of the set. It also should look like it came from the same direction as the key light. This little light is a raw light (no modifiers or scrims), but everything gets blasted on the set. If you look at the picture, you can see the little shadows under it; they tell you that the light is directly above the set. It's there so it won't reflect in the glass, but that placement is what created the "blasted" look, so we need to flag it with something. We made an aluminum sheet metal flag from painted aluminum roofing flashing. We placed this around the light, shielding most of the set from that light source. I mention "most" of the set, because we allowed some of that raw light to spill into the back of the set to create a more direct "sunny" fill on the background.

It all sounds a bit complicated, but it really isn't if you approach it one light at a time, just as this article is laid out one light at a time. You light product shots just as you might build a deck, a house or even a large building. You visualize just how you want things to look, put in the foundation first and build from there. Just as an architect might study every nice building he comes across, you as a professional videographer should study any nice lighting you come across. With practice, you become familiar with lighting, and the best place to start is by looking around your surroundings, by noticing especially nice lighting provided by nature and by understanding how that lighting is created.

Terry O'Rourke specializes in retail advertising photography and videography for clients world wide.