Evolution of a Photograph

It’s great getting the shot first time, but it doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, a photograph develops over a couple of shoots with feedback from the client. This recently happened with a commission from Cork-based tea producer Barry’s Tea.

The brief was to photograph a series of new packaging designs for use in printed material aimed at retailers rather than consumers. Barry’s had produced similar material in the past and asked me to deliver a result that would keep all of the current and past material in synch.

The first shoot produced this image for one of the new ranges:

Barry’s Tea Fruit Infusions - 1
(c) Roger Overall 2008

On reflection, the client said that they would prefer to see all of the boxes standing. They also asked for a different colour background in line with the dominant fruit colour and for the ginger to be removed from the shot.

No problem. Here’s the second photograph:

Barry’s Tea Fruit Infusions - 2
(c) Roger Overall 2008

A little more discussion followed, and the client decided that they preferred a green background after all, which gave us this photograph:

Barry’s Tea Fruit Infusions - 3
(c) Roger Overall 2008

All along we had also been shooting versions of the photographs without the fruit and ultimately this is the image the client chose:

Barry’s Tea Fruit Infusions - 4
(c) Roger Overall 2008

The lighting set-up was fairly simple. The boxes were lit from above with a large diffuse light created by bouncing a strobe off the white ceiling of the studio. A second light with a grid spot was fired from the left of the frame creating some fill and shadows. I lightened the shadows a bit by placing a silver reflector to the right of the boxes. Lastly, the coloured backgrounds were created using a third flash with a colour gel aimed at a white backdrop about three metres behind the boxes.

All the fruit made for some terrific smoothies afterwards.