As a product photographer, I draw inspiration from the objects that I photograph. I often wander stores looking for items that have an evocative factor that catches my eye. The details and impeccable craftsmanship of this lipstick grabbed my attention. The lambskin case stood out to me, and the perfectly embossed logo in the lipstick offered a challenge that I could get excited about.
I found that photographing cosmetics presents a number of challenges. I decided on this composition to show the precision and beauty of the case, the implied motion of how the case opens, and revealing of the remarkable detail of the lipstick itself.
Capturing pours and splashes is something I’ve always found to be very exciting, the forms, shapes, and textures you can capture are always surprising. I wanted to apply stop motion elements to my product and still life photography to create an impactful composition, and to add a somewhat chaotic element to an otherwise clean and controlled image.
The splash that I captured in this image is composited, the surprising result of a single splash. The container was shot separately, before I started throwing cream at it. Although messy and sometimes tedious, adding motion with liquids to an image can bring impact and surprise to the composition.
This image is part of a series featuring men’s fragrances in environments inspired by the product. I wanted to experiment with imagined environments to add personality and reenforce the themes of the branding of the objects. The landscape in this image was created in the studio on a miniature scale, with the exception of the sky, it’s a real sky.
The ocean was created by filling a 5’x5’ shallow tabletop with water, making some waves and adding some motion. The bottle was shot separately and the background was lit using colored gels to maintain the color theme.
