Heavy Metal

Glasgow, Advertising, Commercial and Industrial Photographer Richard Campbell explains how he photographed some seriously heavy metal.

When Red Rock Automation were searching for commercial and industrial product photographers in Glasgow they turned to Blink Imaging to get professional images of their welding positioning equipment. Although we have considerable experience in photographing products for brochures and advertising, machines of this size and weight are a little less common.

There are a number of logistical obstacles to overcome, the main one being that the products to be photographed can’t be physically moved from their premises, at least not for the purposes of a photoshoot as assembling them takes a few hours using a crane (They weight between 20 and 30 tons). The other problem was that the background was far from ideal for photography as it was littered with other equipment. The main purpose of the images was to make the products clearly visible on the company’s website and also show the quality of their construction.

The only practical solution to this was to photograph the products on location and then remove the background in post production. Visually, the welding positioning equipment was quite dramatic in itself, consisting of seriously heavy blocks of steel all painted in Red Rock’s distinctive colours of red and black. This contrasted well with other unpainted steel components such as the silver wheels which allow various items being welded to be rotated.

Given the very strong visual nature of the products the lighting needed to be quite simple. As I was working on location rather than in the studio, I used  four portable speed lights shot into umbrellas. This helped diffuse the light and reduced the risk of reflections from the lights on the products. Some careful positioning of the lights was still required though as the lights were still visible at certain angles. Generally, the best position was to have the lights at a 45 degree angle to the products. This also helped produce a little side lighting which added a little relief and enhanced the detail and solid nature of the components.

Advertising, commercial and industrial product photographers in Glasgow rarely photograph the same products all the time so each shoot requires a bespoke shoot. I often find that clients who haven’t commissioned professional photographers to do a commercial or industrial product shoot for a brochure or website before don’t quite realise what’s involved. In a similar way that a painter starts with a blank canvas and then slowly builds the painting up from the base colours and washes up to the final detail, product photography follows a similar process. First of all you start with getting the basic composition and angle right. Then you move on to the basic lighting set up which you then constantly refine and adjust. Having got all that right, the final component is the retouching at the post production stage. I often find clients looking over my shoulder after the first shot expecting it to be perfect first time round but what I actually do is a series of test shots to check the lighting. Very often they comment the shot looks great not realising that I’m still only taking test shots and further fine adjustments need to be made. It’s these fine adjustments that make all the difference.

One thing in particular I noticed when photographing theses products was that due to their size it wasn’t easy to get light over onto the top of the machines. This made the top a lot darker than the rest of the machine which didn’t look good. Given the limitations of the location, I then took a separate shot just to light the top of the machines. I made sure the tripod was locked down so the camera didn’t move an then took another shoot with the lights in a new position. Although this meant they were now appearing in the shot, this didn’t matter as I would only be using a small section to comp into the final image.

Once all the photography was completed, the final stage was the post production to cut out the distracting background and comp the various shots together. On one of the shots it wasn’t possible to get an angled view of the whole machine as another machine was obscuring the view. I therefore had to take a separate shot showing this part of the machine and add this in later. The final icing on the cake was to add a little subtle shadow to the shots. Although they were effectively cut outs against a white background I always feel aesthetically this doesn’t look right. You could add a full drop shadow but I also felt that there was no point in trying to pretend that these products were photographed in a studio so I decided on a subtle drop shadow just to separate them from the background a little.

The final images will be used by Red Rock for a forthcoming trade exhibition. I shot them at a very high resolution so they will work with enlarged for exhibition stands.