Shoot: Make-up and Brushes
Don Giannatti
Lessons
Class Introduction
25:09 2Basic Tabletop Photography
17:55 3Basic Tabletop Q&A
27:08 4More Basic Tabletop Photography
10:42 5Lighting Setups and Implementation
26:47 6Building Simple Tools
27:41Why Tabletop Photography?
30:36 8Product vs. Still Life
27:28 9Product vs. Still Life Q&A
21:48 10Basic Tabletop Setup and Gear
14:38 11Setup and Gear Q&A
19:44 12Lighting Considerations
25:21 13General Q&A
28:43 14Shoot: Wine Bottles
49:37 15Shoot: Jewelry Part I
23:16 16Shoot: Jewelry Part II
34:37 17Q&A and Business
19:05 18Shooting for Dimension
22:28 19Shooting for Dimension Q&A
14:13 20The Challenge of Shiny Surfaces
29:07 21Working with a Variety of Surfaces
14:33 22Shoot: Make-up and Brushes
35:17 23Shooting to a Layout
37:41 24Student Shoots, Part I
53:09 25Student Shoots, Part II
31:13 26Fixing a Missing Pearl in Photoshop
18:39 27The Value of Your Work
41:30 28Product and Still Life: The Modern Challenge
26:54 29Still Life Demo (Shoes)
08:32 30Bidding and Pricing Q&A
31:17 31A Sensible Approach to Gear
12:18 32Shoot: Guitar with Multiple Light Layers
17:41 33Guitar: Compositing Lights in Photoshop
30:06 34Drop and Pop
12:40 35Special Shoot: Motorcycle
59:53 36Q&A and Relief Cut Shoot
10:14 37Creating Your Product Photography Business, Part I
40:09 38Creating Your Product Photography Business, Part II
27:08Lesson Info
Shoot: Make-up and Brushes
um as you can see our set up here we're kind of getting ready to do these make up brushes and we're using our um fluorescent tube background here and we're gonna also shoot this with a tilt shift lens take it off here and uh whenever I'm holding my camera always put it around my neck okay that's um sorry about that I misspoke earlier so you do want live you yes um then we'll switch to tethered in the middle of that self thie tilt shift lens gives you view camera like control and that means that it shifts up we had to close up here that the lens will shift up or down actually this was shifting down because the way I've got it in there but from the center point of the lens when you should've building and you have to tilt your camera back to get the top of the building you're top of the building is far away farther away from you and your lens than the bottom of the building is it's tilting back so then when you make a print go back to straight and now the building is falling backwards cal...
led peace keyhole like it's just uh on an angle so what this allows you to do is to leave your camera sitting straight and then push the should ask where's the setting on the smooth okay good good good thank you had it locked out so this lets you the ability to then raised the lens up and get the top of the building without changing the angle of your back from flat so the same thing happens in the studio we're going to show you how to do that however the first thing that we're going to do with it is the shift so when we know that when we're shooting way have depth of field the depth of field is the same angle as the back of our camera right it's flattened up the field as our subjects go farther way they become less in focus with the tilt lens we can tilt it down and start to gain our knauer our flat feel the focus is actually at an angle and so we can start to go from back to forward and pick up some more depth of field up top okay all right hold on just for a second I'm trying to think this through um if we shoot live you that I can't capture it well yeah but it's done it's gonna be an orange let's just stay with tethered I'll just shoot the shots and we'll have to put him on okay so when we go to jay pick all right j peg away faster we'll do that she didn't put him up ok sometimes we have to do things uh here that we normally wouldn't do in a studio it's all part of the live experience and I'm teaching absolutely folks we're going to j peg because of the live teaching experience not because don would shoot in jail for this type of work right I would always shoot raw I always always always shoot raw ah year ago I would've said I usually always shoot raw and today I see it's just don't take it out of raw um claire bar says so excited to see a tilt shift lens in action yeah they're kind of fun there really are kind of fun we're going to show us until shift action with this first and then we're going to go in actually shoot to this layout with that we'll shoot the products to the layout that we have that's an indesign layout in my studio I do have a mac within design on it so my clients khun come over plug their file in bring up in design and work with it the only thing that we have to be very careful of us font usage so they'll pack that package up there fonts that there may be using for that that uh document they will use it on my machine and then they take their phones off the machine because we don't steal thoughts from folks or if they need to be taken working off a laptop they'll bring their in design document over there is another company that makes late page layout stuff but what he uses them anymore and he went on to work in a bar on deep space nine anyway we're pasting these things down on some fluorescent tubes that we spray painted black on I'm being very very careful how I lay them down because these ends they're going to show so uh I want this to be kind of a nice graphic uh layout here these are spreading out from the center and then we have the highlights from the tubes and the speculators are actually part of the shot so I'm taking them down taping them down so they don't roll they will have a tendency to roll some trying to create a nice space to them all right let's see what we've got here let's take a meter reading way have triggers plugged a guy's gotta have traders way thea thank my old meter is just kind of uh biting the dust these days here slightly towards the sub towards the camera not straight up in this particular case not back just slightly ford so that the light hitting the dome actually is the same like that hits subjects sixteen six ah little over sixteen for this shot I think it's down all the way yeah this's a pro photo three hundred so you can see how powerful they are um he's getting you know yeah there's the scythe quick question uh we'll figure that out from doug is their advantage to using the painted bulbs could you use could you paint pvc pipe you know I haven't paid pvc pipe to do this with it because it's not us smooth surface when you paint it you'll find the pvc pipe has a it's like it's been sanded and you'll get that look to it now if you can get rid of that look somehow maybe with polyurethane to get more about glossy to it I would imagine that you could but that's what I've found I have not looked at the shiny black one to see if the shiny black uh object subject has that shoebox guys in the shoebox takes more questions way lost trigger quite a few questions about the difference between the flat or glossy paint on those tubes as well and you could flat paint it absolutely you get what would you get you much more diffused highlight your the uh this brightness of this highlight when I show you the shot the brightness of this highlight fast anything about this shot is that the highlight is practically pure white and then it is rolls away from the from the chaos object you know the roundness of the fluorescent tube it goes up your black so it's almost like shooting out on strips of white it's very very cool got it alright I just actually right on top just like that all right so we said sixteen let's get an initial shot here just so we can see what we are and the uh tell schiff lenses do not have wait till chip lenses do not have focus auto auto focus their manual focus let's because the lens is moving up and down I think the new well there we go kind of cool huh goto horizontal so we see ej is there more see how that background looks here is we work through the different um areas you know what that um light is very contrast e for this for the silver that's in these brushes things that's very very bright could I see this with a secondary um scream in it the would scream in front look how pretty it presents our subjects to camera it's stunning hold it up in front what should I do I'm gonna kill a stop right shooting sixteen goto eleven right there good thank you wear this was that sixteen who I like that I like that a lot thank you right we'll just go ahead and see what set that up then while I'm talking here the double diffusion does what can you see it adds a little secondary line right here soft blocks double diffusion right there so the soft boxes bright the diffuser is not quite as bright but it's larger right it's closer to the source so we get this little line but what I especially love is look at the difference of how this presents here and how it presents here we haven't lost our would even in the speculum and yet we still have a very nicely presented and very pretty uh subject we've got this great little light up here on the uh on the bristles and earlier bread I said I probably wouldn't use a speed light I probably am going to use a speed light with the smallest grid like those bristles up ok at that last point here questions don't I have a question sure so you would double defuse it before you would move the light up yes if I move the light up I'm going to shape change the shape of this the farther away my light is the narrow where this yes so when we were doing it at break I brought that where I wanted that size of that light thing to be so would have worked within that spot now last thing I want to do is to make that strike smaller right now strike is a little bit smaller than the largest strike it has to be that way if I take it down so it's really really thin it's gonna look like you know wires running across and I don't want to look like that pretty nice background right for six pieces of fluorescent light some pain kind of unique right now I know someone out there is going to hang me that's gary per wheeler's thing sure wass he's not doing it anymore so I am okay thank you very much harry was a great inspiration to make a wonderful book out shooting this stuff that I learned a lot from uh well flaw here picking up a little bit of taking have to roll that over a little bit of tape right in here can you imagine trying to see them in the back of an lcd screen gonna miss it waken fix it today but why fix it let's just do it right you know take the time to do it right and then we're good um don yes wanted from w early can you demonstrate a little bit more about what the tilt shift lens is actually doing for you yes versus way haven't done is go there yet we're just trying to get the composition and then why I'm saying we show you that I get lots of questions about that we're gonna play with this still life here just a little bit to show you the tilt shift stuff and then we're gonna actually shoot this still life for the ad that I laid out and they were going to shoot some powder and a lipstick for the ad with using the shift so we'll start with tilt their momentum shift how many stands way yeah don't just wait to catch the bottom with brushes is that well I was just showing the I'm just showing the background on it yeah yes we well when we do it do it for the ad we will for this part where I'm showing the tilt and the shift probably not okay okay sorry gets quiet those were just kind of a good way okay so this is the lens in really tight for the shot and I'm to figure out how I can get making try five to move three things to make the tripod move it's so bizarre I gotta figure sit down get composed but gonna lighten this up did you notice the front of the russia is not in focus even at sixteen okay it's also not in focus appear right on the tip of the brush is even though it's sixteen I'm done that's all I got sixteen I can crank this up twenty two and get it but I'm gonna use with shift part are there till part with lettuce to bring it into focus okay way haven't apple crate I can sit down right here I got a job thanks okay so what we're gonna do is tilt the lens down to get a depth of field that explains so much long guys we show you this is the shot with the lens in position wait go see how the focus goes way out at the top it's just gone at the top so what we're gonna do is get this lined up the way we want it and then tilt shift down tilt the lens down to pick up that depth of field up top yes so you're tilting the land so it's at the same angle as the pressures are yes exactly the russians need to be adjusted wear tilting the lens if you can you can see the lens is tilted this way so now it's pulling in focus for both ends of the brush rather than when it's at the flat way and not pulling it in at all so we could either photograph we're either getting a narrow field of focused through this or we're expanding our field of focused by tilting the lens forward now the russians are not correct because they're not square to the table top to system here this is the part I apologize for folks but this is the detail detail detail that's got to be right okay that's center one's right after we position these guys get bread on john come over guys get a really tight like this and there were two spread out that center brush is now straight up it was crooked before when you're doing this you must always be is absolutely critical and deliberate as possible you can't let anything slide can you see what I'm talking about here these air horizontal that brushes off very little but it's enough to be off to make the picture just not work and I have seen too many photographers go well that's close enough there's no such thing is close enough not when you're working with a six inch brush on this background there's no close enough it's perfect or it's not you know when you take a landscape shot and the horizons like three degrees off that's a mistake you could put it sixteen degrees off that's cool three is a mistake that being you know if I'm going to do this at an angle to those those fluorescent tubes then I'm going to go on an angle that absolutely no one could ever construe as being a mistake it is exactly what you want so questions of what we're doing this we're gonna make sure it's perfect would make this shot you don't have a tilt shift lens you khun maybe uh take two shots for a three shot no because when you change the focus you can change the size watch your size of change size will actually change when you do that so if you don't have you're gonna have to come up over the picture a little more um a uh or you're gonna have to back up and crop the image so if you're shooting you know cameron's got a you know a really nice file size like five d mark two or d three or something you got really nice file size you can actually back up and crop it in and still have a very large clean image toe work with uh no I meant to do a composite photo shop yeah when you do that you'll never get him to match necessarily because when you change your focus out to get the far one the size changes so not only does the focus changed the size of it changes so where they start to meet becomes a real problem good can it be done o sure it can't be done it's just not it's not like an easy fix it can't be done what's up doc from amsterdam is wondering it wouldn't the lens baby must be much more cost effective what's the difference between using the lens baby or a cannon till shift lens over your hand this is a precision piece of glass that makes absolutely precision photographs a lens baby is a fun object play with it is not optically in the in the same universe as this lens is um can you do it with a lens baby sure you sure can that's one of the things that it does what it does is it creates uh that depth of field so you khun you could really swing it uh forward and put this person is in focus here and he goes out of focus there in the background is all kinds of s they do they're great for that um this is a little more serious approach to that so don't anybody from lens maybe thinking I don't like the product I do it's just I wouldn't I couldn't shoot a product shen before client on a baby a wedding shot our fortune shot absolutely even fashion maybe so a question from a shark dvr in charlotte north carolina and h h canada could you talk again about the focal range of this ship plans and would you ever suggested fifty or eighty five when would you suggest I should cancel candidate I believe makes four till our three tones shift lens is a twenty four forty five ninety um all three if I was a product for shooting shooter like full time product that was my number one thing and I really want to go for it you're gonna have to have one of those lenses which one you choose might depend on this subject matter that you choose twenty four tilt shift lens is a fantastic lends it really is but you're your studio you've got everything in that camera so you're cut your having to come in really close to control the perspective twenty four millimeter lens it's really reaching out the forty five is the one that I would probably say would be the first one to get because it's gonna be on a full frame camera it's a normal size is the normal ends uh with the ability to tell shift and on a crop sensor it's a little bit longer it's like a seventy with building told shift on the of course the ninety really reaches out on uh ah lot of uh what I was doing liquor shits bottles of liquor and that I used the ninety almost exclusively that for that because the telephoto flattens your subject has a tendency to flatten it in and then the tilt shift would give me the ability to get back and shifted up and so my bottle would be sitting on the base of my photograph with no background and we're going to show you what exactly what I'm talking about is that you don't want to see background they only want to see the bottle and you had to be very careful that only happens in the center point of your image of your camera brit photogenic next who is robert from central mexico it's wondering who had done a stack focus shift tilt linds wasn't available and we just yeah that's when I really asked and it's one of those things where you know if I really had two thousand that was the only way to get the shot yes but it's not easy because used change focus you change size so that point where there was those two things are going to start meeting there is goingto it's different size so you're really gonna have some photo shop work to do with it it's not just sliding drop yeah I've used a focusing really for that before where you you mount the camera on a precision slider where you keep the focus to same focal like the same and you just millimeter camera forward ok in order to be fucked okay because you don't refocusing that you're just you're just re shooting okay yeah you could do that a lot of work it's a lot of work so you know you know if you had three photos if you three shoots a year you know baby that's a perfect way to go if you're shooting every week with one I would recommend investing in till the ship and you can rent these from where do you have a future wells lasers lasers are lenses bar lenses and lasers and there's a number of other one absolutely and they're not they're not expensive I think last time I read it I'm not gonna say numbers but it is surprisingly inexpensive to rent it for a week then just past that cost onto your client it's a specialized lens just pass it on your client that's what you do to make life easier but yeah you'll need if you had your pinch somewhere you need to do a thought that would be cool then that would be something but those rails air not inexpensive themselves some are okay way close to russia people humidity and here's something to start shit okay well let's get a shot we're tilting forward on this shot we got here and we've got our other lights right back that off just a little bit of john so we get those rushes in there and we're gonna use this tape up ready to take on the front uh six maybe four five six ways trying to stake a little light in across the top of those brushes toe light them up give them some texture without it showing on those for us lights that are tilted back may not be possible way don't know yet so we're gonna tape up the front of this grid have a little slit of light really focus this grid right across those brushes and then we're going to see if we can get it at an angle that the force of light bulb doesn't see it going back a question from ryan's in qatar would aid till chip lens works well on a crap sensor camera like yes we're shooting it on crop sensor yes yeah absolutely then but that I would I would everything when I talk about the lenses and focal lengths I sort of do a basic full frame uh you can't go down from there so if you're shooting a crop flynn's camera twenty four million your tilt shift might be and you know you're gonna always stay with prop twenty four is much much nicer on a crop frame as faras not getting all the studio because the twenty four's about what is about thirty six something like that so it's not nearly as white is when you put it on that full frame and then you just get everything since since they're still working on that maybe you could explain that for people who are not everyone is familiar with the with the crap backdrops crops sensor is basically uh let's say we have a thirty five millimeter sensor that's this big a cropped sensor camera like a sixty d or uh thirty two hundred nikon or any of those crops sensors is actually the center two thirds of that frame so basically it's like cropping and eight by ten down to uh you know seven by nine or a six and a half by half that lens is still spreading out the image tto be twenty four millimeters back there but the capture area is smaller so it's just getting the middle of it okay so theoretically if you have a hundred millimeter lens on your camera if you're got shooting the full frame you have full coverage of the hot one hundred millimeter but if you get rid of a third of that down it's like making your hundred millimeters like adding another third to it so it's like one hundred forty millimeter lens okay depth of field doesn't change depth of field doesn't change you have a two hundred millimeter on my my camera gives me the same look as a three hundred millimeter but the depth of field is still two hundred millimeter now they'll be arguments probably three two one let's hit the internet now because they know it changes no it only changes if you change the image to be the same so if I do a full frame on brett uh full from charles here and then I put a problem I have to come in our back up a little bit to get that same full friend then it changes because I moved my limbs but the reality of it is if the lens never change is that it is the same depth of field because the best field is built into the lengths that enable always be that way when you get into the larger format cameras back in the day might a eight by ten cameras normal lenses a three hundred fifty millimeter lens has the same depth of field is a three hundred fifty million a lens on a thirty five millimeter camera I am not so much and so tilting and shifting was absolutely necessary for pretty much every shot we did yeah yes okay let's bring the speed like I sixteenth power will bring it right in here let that slip top way we'll fix it in a shop wait one more shot and we bring up that in design frame we're just you know for expediency I'm just gonna have you holding up okay wait that's split right let's get our full zoom wanted I slipped coming right through there like that okay let's fire this thing fires you ready right on their way little bit yeah but we didn't get the reflection on the forces taped it off so it's not a big bunch of light coming through there brett moving moving out a little bit so it's a little bit more on the top of the russian said the scythe there that's what I'm seeing in my head but I said what I did that's what I saw my hatice has kind of a shot way are picking up a little on the forest to grow so we can't be from the back we've gotta be from the side like that from the back pick up any reflection on more your speed light is just like a room light on the top of a devilish way wei captured the shot we were we saw in her head we also made it just a little bit different than just using one top white I used a lot of these guys got probably six speed lights of all brands and nature's uh whenever I see money may you know for twenty or thirty bucks I'll buy it if it gets me a year just doing stuff like this because I'm not using most of amount shooting people you know thousands of actuacion sze they may they may only do one thousand actuacion sze in a year but if I could put a little piece of tape on the front of him and get a kind of a little spotty light of love to do it
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
mc
THere are some courses in CL i think of as not covering a to z but covering -z to z. THis is one of those courses. The value proposition is over the top. The instricutor: Don Giannatti is so experienced he's a relaxed in his knowledge and practiced in cutting to the chase to provide answers to really good questions about set ups for product photos (vs. art/ still-life). The topics: complete workflow from first principles in order to understand what we're trying to achieve with table top work, Don Giannatti makes it clear that we're using light deliberately to give shape to an object. Example insight: using a white card (or black) reflector is not the same as using a silver/gold reflector. The latter create a new light source; the former shape the light that's there. Can imagine the arguments but the demo brings the points home. Or how about NOT using umbrellas for product shots. Or for "drop and pop" product shots, how to do that without umbrellas and tents "that's 50 dollars a shot right there" says Giannatti. Example tool demo: one of the joys of this course is that such an expert does most of the class using readily makable tools like scrims from shower curtains and baking paper. The specialist tools like a modifier on a flash is well within the range of an aspiring commerial table top photographer. And Meaningful Demos LIGHTING/composition what are some of the most challenging and compelling things to shoot when building a portfolio/photographic experience? Can you shoot shiny stuff - like bottles and jewlery. PHOTOSHOP making photoshop unpretencious and accessible, Giannatti presents examples of how to fix bits of a shot, as well as - and this one is worth the price of admission - how to put together a composite of a guitar product shot if you only have one limited sized light to light the whole thing. We also see where highlights can be added - and how. Some basic knowledge of Photoshop layering, masking and brushes would be good to have, but one can work back from seeing it applied into those basic skills. BUSINESS We start with light giving shape to objects as a demonstrable principle, move into how to use light structurally for bringing out something fantastic about that product - that as Giannatti points out - puts bread on someone's table, so respect. From these demos we go from light and camera to post to produce the finished image. Now what? or how have a product that needs shooting? That's the business of product photography. In these excellent sections on Business, Giannatti details the heuristics of hard graft to get gigs: where to look for contacts, frequency of approach, engaging with social media (you don't have to, he says, but effectively, it's gonna cost ya). "Doing just these few things you're already way ahead of your competition." I can believe it: they are many of them tedious, but can also well believe they are what pay off. COURSE BONUSES JUST FOR SIGNING UP - for those who subscribed to a live broadcast, all the slides were provided in advance (you can see this offer on class materials) Now that's classy. What other CL courses have done that: given something to participants who just show an interest to sign up? (It's that gift thing kevin kubota talks about in his workshop on photography business - makes one want to work with that person: pay them for the value they create, eh?) TRUST/VALUE Instructor Personality Throughout each part what's delightful is just the EXPERIENCE of this instructor. He's put together a thoughtful course from light to lighting to parts to gear to post to business. There's immediate trust: plainly this man has made a living from what he's talking about, and has addressed almost any immaginable scenario. There's a great demo towards the end of the course of working with students to take shots. The value to folks watching is to see how he helps us all think about how to problem solve (the mantra for the course) to find the shot - to use light card after lightcard to wrap the light to bring out the countours of the material. Even when he says "that's just not working" - there's not a sense of the people shooting having failed - but an opportunity to think about what's been learned - to keep working the problem. There's a whole lot of HOW in that interaction that is highly valuable. Thanks to the participants in the workshop to be so willing too to do that work. This is the kind of course you leave feeling like ok, i can do this - or at least i have the tools and some knowhow now about them to start to work these problems, to start to create value in these kinds of shots. I am already just from being here a better photographer now. Related CL Course: This course feels like a terrific complement to Andrew Scrivani's Food Photography. And no wonder: both take place in small areas and use light in similar ways. A contrast is that in editorial food photography - scrivani's domain - there's a focus on skills to work with what's there; in table top/product, one can enhane - knowing how to do that effectively/believably is where the skills - learning to see that - come in for this kind of work in partiular . If tabletop/product photography is a space you wish to explore, or you just want to be able to practice working with light in the small, and see how to bring you will be delighted with this -z to z deep dive introduction.
a Creativelive Student
By chance I stumbled accross Don Giannattis’s Website and his creativeLIVE selection of videos. I was impressed by the material presented and decided to purchase the course for adopting some of his methods and concepts of light control in table top photography. The course covers a wide field, from building your own lighting tools to guidelines for getting in the product photography business. Emphasis is put on understanding light control related to the specifics of the object, discussing the how and why of the creative process. Insistence and patience were demonstrated to be prerequisites for achieving the desired quality of the pictures. I liked to follow the course, because Don Giannattis’s makes an excellent instructor. He has a clear concept, a wonderful sense of humor, and he is very flexible when listening and responding to questions of participants. I really liked this course and recommend it to all beginners in table top photography. William
a Creativelive Student
What an amazing workshop. Don holds nothing back, taking us from start to finish in a manner that will allow anyone doing this workshop (and I mean DOING) to go out and do product photography. What's more, Don is not pushing a bunch of expensive gear as the key to making good photos - he makes it accessible to those starting out with a low budget. I could feel Don's good-will toward beginning photographers in the way he conducted this workshop and that is deeply appreciated. It makes him a good teacher. I bought this course and his Lighting Essentials workshop and consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to learn from him.