Its been a long, cold and busy winter (I'll believe spring is here when I see it)...but its also been a very happy and productive time in my life. I just haven't been able to sit still long enough to share it with you.
If you were hoping for another Silly Sheep post, fear not, another one is in the works with some updates. Today I wanted to write a post about another topic which is near and dear to my heart: BioLogic Company. BioLogic is the company that my father and mother started in the basement of my grandparents house back in 1985. Through lots of hard work that little company has slowly grown, and is stronger than ever today. BioLogic produces and sells beneficial nematodes, microscopic roundworms that hunt down and kill pest insects in the soil. These beneficial nematodes are a green alternative to chemical pesticides. Besides being safe for people, pets, and plants, our nematodes actively hunt down pests for months after application and pest insects won't develop resistance to them. My little brother, mother, and little sister carry are the backbone of Biologic. I still enjoy the small part I play in designing product packaging and generating some of the advertising media.
Early in the year I sent to work creating images for our Amazon product line. It wasn't much fun at the time. If you've ever purchased something on Amazon, you may have noticed that all the product pictures appear on a seamless white background. This wasn't going to be easy with Biologic's products, since most of our packaging is white. My brother sent me several boxes of products and about 100 million living nematodes in ziplock bags to photograph. I set up a small makeshift photo studio in my study, and set to work. This seemingly simple project soon became a source of great frustration, since I was fussy and wanted the pictures to turn out looking really nice.
My basic lighting setup is shown above. I used two soft box lights from either side, and one soft box shining in from the front. A piece of dollar store foam board balanced on the side lights bounced light back down onto the product and kept the yellowish ceiling light from interfering with the colors. I taped two thin pieces of dry erase poster board together and created a gentle curve to give that infinite white background look. I created various stands and props with paper and tape to keep the products in position while I snapped my shots. I was happy with my lighting, but the raw pictures weren't getting close enough to where I wanted them...
As you can see, the background isn't pure white despite my best efforts...
No matter how much I tried tweaking my camera settings and the lighting I couldn't the background to be pure white like the Amazon guidelines stipulated. I had taken hundreds of pictures of boxes and was getting pretty bored and burned out. My brother kept asking me where the pictures were, so I made one final push to finish them off. I read up online about the art of product photography and realized that even the pros can't get a perfect shot in camera. They get the pictures as close as possible and then use Photoshop. Photoshop alleviated my frustration, and allowed me to finish off the project.
Photoshopped and ready for upload to Amazon.
This project may have been a really frustrating way to start the new year, but I'm really happy with the results. Its really fun to see my pictures up on Amazon now. I kept the nematodes I used in this photo shoot and put them to good use ridding a fungus gnat infestation in the house of a sweet old Italian lady. Within two weeks all the fungus gnats were gone, and all the potted plants were protected for months into the future.
Need some product shots of your own for the internet? I can be hired for small projects!