Design Artifact-Lighting product and set up for Groupie Love

Our group focused on a company called Groupie Love. The product is jewelry made from guitar picks from different bands, mostly classic rock. My part was helping Shay in capturing pictures of product to put up on the web site. The client wanted her product on a white crisp back ground with no shadows and a daylight temperature(lighting). We went on a "location scout" trip to see what kind of light, natural and practical light we were going to be working with. We also talked about what lens Shay had and what she was going to use. I took pictures of the set up and the lighting we had to work with.

  






This picture shows that we have a practical light and two sliding glass doors to work with. One sliding glass door is facing North and the other to the West.                             

 Another window we have to work with.

We are seeing the light from the sliding glass doors and the light from small rectangle sky lights above our heads to the left.

If you look at this for a little bit, you can see the light spilling out onto the top of this picture. It is from the sky lights that are almost at a 45* angle above me. 

The sky lights and the light they are letting in. It was about the same time we were going to do the photo shoot too. So it was a good approximation of what light was going to be there.

The biggest part of my job was to set up the product and put it in the best light possible. I am learning doing film shoots or photo shoots it is best to stay flexible and roll with the punches. We needed a white box in order to shoot what the client wanted. I was going to borrow one from a friend, but that fell through. The client had made one and had used it a few times so we used that. We fiddled with it and tried to think of ways to hang the earrings and nothing was working. I used what was laying around her work space with permission. I found a rock that she had used in previous photo shoots to display the earrings. I also found the top of a shoe box. I used these items to put under the white poster board to make a slope that would keep the earrings from slipping into a clump at the bottom of the light box. It worked and the earrings looked awesome. With the longer earrings and bracelets I had to rearrange the poster board so it would curve. I would then lay the product horizontal instead of vertical like I was doing. During the actual photo shoot, it was partly cloudy outside. I moved the box around the table trying to find the best possible light for Shay. We found that the darker earrings needed a tiny bit more light and the lighter ones worked better in a darker light, like when a cloud went by. A few needed a hard light and we put the box facing the sun. We used the light from the skylights and the sliding glass door facing North. At one point it got really dark and we turned on the practical light. I think we ended up waiting for a couple of minutes for the clouds to move. We tried staggering the earrings to see what would happen, but decided to keep them even to keep continuity going. We even made a joke about it and talked about how some things seemed to stick in our brains from class. 

Gestalt Principles

We used the Law of Similarity, Law of Proximity, and the Law of Pragnanz. I already mentioned we used the Law of Continuity. The Law of Similarity is used within the product itself and we put matching earrings together and took a photo of both earrings. The Law of Proximity was used by placing the product side by side, like earrings. If you put them too close together it would seem like a big glob and you wouldn't be able to tell what you were looking at. The Law of Pragnanz is used with the white back ground. The client wanted her product to look clean and crisp, so you notice all the details. We reduced it to the simplest form possible. All you see is the jewelry not some crazy background. Your mind won't wonder about where the picture is taken at, or who that person is wearing the jewelry, it will be focused on the product itself. 

Conclusion

I only provided pictures of my job. You can find the finished photos on Shay's blog. I loved the product we were designing for. It is original and nothing like what I have seen out there. One of the many things I am looking into as a career is lighting and taking photos of product. I think it would be fun and you could fiddle with light and take time in what you are doing. As a professor pointed out, I could also stay home with my kids and do this. It would be a perk, but I am not sure I want to stay home.