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ASSIGNMENT DETAILS:
• Publisher: Sarah, from Oil of Joy Apothecary
• Purpose: Creating marketing materials, email newsletters and educational content.
• Request: Seeking photos of herbs, plants, raw ingredients used in skin care, apothecary type things, anything pertaining to a small local market. Visit Sarah’s website, Oil of Joy Apothecary, and look at the ingredients of specific products she sells to get specific ideas for exactly what to shoot!
• Special Instructions: Photos should be light and bright, including plenty of white, natural wood, nature or green plants. Clean and simple is ideal.
• Orientation: Any orientation is fine!
• Photo Specs: Feel free to use any device to take the photo, but make sure it looks high quality on a computer screen and the photos are at least 2000px wide. Edit tastefully. No watermarks.
• How to Submit: Members can follow the A, B, C process outlined here. (Instructions for non-members can be viewed here.) You can submit up to 10 photos.
• Remuneration: The photographer whose photo is chosen as the winner of this assignment will receive one free month of Lenspiration membership! For any additional photos used by the publisher at any time in the future, Lenspiration members will receive $5 per photo.
• Terms: By submitting your photo(s) on this forum, you agree to the terms outlined in the STS Photo Assignment Agreement.
• Deadline: Midnight Saturday, November 27, 2021 (or until this topic is no longer highlighted yellow).LEARN HOW:
Watch how I shot this assignment and learn how to shoot it yourself at, On Assignment: Raw Ingredients!WATCH CRITIQUE:
Watch the photos submitted for this assignment get critiqued live by registering for the November 30 Photo Coaching Webinar!
How does one burn up 2 solid hours playing with limes and lemons?! I had a great time shooting this assignment, and spent a good deal of time shooting and editing these photos.
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It was pretty easy to do this assignment because my mom has tons of herbs so I had pretty much all that I needed. These are the pictures for “PREGNANT MAMA TEA, ORGANIC”. They have no picture for that product.
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Wow!
* Great initiative finding a product that needs a photo
* That’s a real plus that your mom has so many of these raw ingredients already!
* The table-top background is a great choice
* Of the first set you submitted, IMG_7873.jpg is the best arrangement since it feels like all the “pieces” fit together
* Of the second set, IMG_7851.jpg is the best arrangement since there are fewer distractions and the eye is directed soap barShoot these same two again, implementing some suggestions:
* She’s looking for “light and bright, including plenty of white”. Find a light gray wooden surface to set up your arrangements on. Perhaps photograph the second photo on a light-colored bathroom sink.
* You need diffused lighting. Use golden hour light outside. Or utilize indirect light coming from a window. Or create a light box. Try utilizing some of the ideas suggested in this article (particularly ideas 13, 12, 10, 6, and 4, creating multiple light sources, and using the strongest flashlights you can find.Since the purpose that Sarah is requesting these photos for is “creating marketing materials, email newsletters and educational content”, I wanted to make sure my photos didn’t look like product photography: I’m not photographing her actual products.
I scrounged around to see what we had at our house; my sister planted different herbs this year so I had some to choose from!
In the photos, I wanted to make sure to not just photograph things that looked visually pleasing, but that would actually go together in a product.
I was amazed: we had a small bit of dried lavender I could use, and another herb we had was lemongrass. Looking around on Sarah’s site, I saw she has some lavender/lemongrass products! That was a fun discovery.
Also, pastry boards make great backgrounds and surfaces for these types of photos! We have two so I used them both.
And one last note: if you take the photos outside (like I did), think “does like look like a natural set up?”. I was taking a few pictures of my bowl and cinnamon with lovely golden autumn bokeh in the background when suddenly I realized, why would I have a bowl and cinnamon sitting outside? I would have them in my kitchen, not in my backyard! So I used the white siding of our house and the tan pastry board as backgrounds instead! Looked a lot more real.
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Thanks James! I’m going to try to reshoot that sometime. I’m still trying to find my battery charger so I might wait till I can go to storage to find it. The phone quality is awful. I did have a lot of trouble with the lighting. It was at night and the kitchen table was reflecting the kitchen light. So I used the phone light. I’m going to try to do it somewhere different and in daylight, too.
Excellent observations, about the background, @lenspirationlydia. @esther, how Lydia did it outdoors for the lighting with a “fake” background is something you should try!
Here’s a couple I got of comfrey leaves. To get brighter, diffused light I set up out on our veranda.
I used a 58 mm, 1.4 manual lens set at f/4.0. Even though I was using a tripod I couldn’t go too low on my shutter speed because the wind was picking up and shaking the leaves.
I was trying to go for bright and simple, but to me it doesn’t seem as if I accomplished it very well. Maybe, because it’s not “bright and airy” and then it’s too simple.
-Hannah
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this was super fun! I had some difficulty with weather, it started raining after a while on day 1 and then was really windy day 2 but I managed to get some pictures. Big thanks to my mom who helped me with finding ingredients and holding the honey stick to let it drizzle 🙂
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@brenalig, I can tell you enjoyed the shoot. I can see it in your photos!
@blessingscaptured, I don’t know if it was the way you edited it or if the lighting was actually that way, but I love how in your second shot, the vertical one, how morning-like the lighting is! It’s the perfect contrast, giving a nice energetic feeling.
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