Lights, camera, action! As commercial photographers we’re always fascinated by the sheer variety of products which people ask us to photograph in our Glasgow studio.
Commercial Studio Product Photography with Paul Bates who has been working in the movie industry for years providing lighting for shoots in and around Glasgow and the rest of Scotland. For years he’d noticed that the ‘flags’ which are used to help shape and control the lighting on film sets where usually just tied to bits of wood with clips in a very makeshift way. Why had no-one thought of making this much more professional and easier to use?
This shot was taken to show the 2 different sizes.
After some development he came up with the Bates Batten. This consists of a simple batten which slides onto the bottom of the ‘flag’ (basically a large strip of black material) to weight it down and securely tie it to a lighting stand.
Paul was looking for some professional studio product photography to help showcase his invention when he took it to the world movie trade fair in Las Vegas. One particular challenge was that he wanted the product, which is black, photographed against a black background to give it a very stylish dramatic look. Fortunately, we’d done something very similar before so we knew exactly what to do in terms of lighting and photographing it.
As well as the ‘glossy’ product shots, Paul also wanted some taken against white.
He only needed about half a dozen shots so the shoot only took half a day, which meant he was able to get some sleek professional product photographs without too much outlay.