Forgotten Feline Couture Product Photography

I’ve just done another product shoot for a friend – this time for Shannon of Forgotten Feline.
I must have a lot of creative and entrepreneurial friends 🙂

Shannon/Forgotten Feline is a taxidermist and creates fun and quirky taxidermy – usually mice with fun props in somewhat alternative poses – not your usual stuff. But she’s also doing a line of hats, fascinators, head-pieces and such. It was these that she asked me to photograph.

Setup is similar to my other product shoots:

White background – over a table.
Reflector/barn doors light, on a boom, pointing down and back at the background
White Umbrella camera right pointing down at item
Silver to subject left bouncing some light at subject and some at background

I could use a third light instead of the reflector but I prefer to keep it simple – also I’ve found that the white umbrella gives a very good spread of light – more than a softbox would.

Here’s a quick diagram:

Before shooting I take a whitebalance setting using a grey card. A colour checker would be better but I don’t have one yet – I’m keeping an eye on eBay etc for cheap ones.

Editing is fairly basic:

Double checking the white balance
General exposure adjusting for the whole picture (usually Exposure, Blacks and Shadow sliders)
Additional exposure for the background in Camera Raw using Quick Mask
General other tweaks – Clarity, Vibrance, Saturation.

I shoot RAW, edit in AdobeRGB then convert to sRGB for web.

Here are links to her shop and Facebook pages:

Etsy Shop : http://www.etsy.com/shop/forgottenfeline

Facebook Page : https://www.facebook.com/ForgottenFelineCouture

And a selection of the pictures: