Advertising Photography: take two
Two weeks ago I had to photograph my cellular phone, mimicking the lighting used in the commercial advertising photos of the phone as close as possible. I did satisfactory, but by no means perfect.
This last assignment was given to us out of a box. We chose a piece of paper out of the box that had one word on it. My word happened to be curly. The assignment was to shoot with our widest aperture, use natural "looking" lighting in a natural "looking" environment and interpret the word. After a bout an hour and a half getting the lights set up, I photographed my set up.
A few dozen photographs, many lighting changes, and some jostling of curly fries I came up with my final photo.
Upon class critique, the professor walked to the projection of my image, pointed at the tightly wound curly fry in the front and said, "This fry looks like a penis."
The class erupted into laughter, and I had no comments regarding the photo, but rather simply the need I had to make the fries more "explosive" and make the box seem gigantic. Advertising photography is a little different and more difficult than I thought it would be. I can hope that the lighting techniques I'm learning will assist me in future photo assignments.
I have three more days to get a 5-page fiction story ready for peer edit.
