My Latest Shoot

As I continue my journey into product photography, one of my biggest goals has been working with real brands—reaching out, receiving a brief, and bringing their products to life. So, when The Isle of Skye Paint Co generously sent me a selection of their paints with full creative freedom, I knew this was my chance to experiment and push my skills further! Today I’m writing about a lifestyle set I created as one of the final six images delivered, which I have inserted above.

This was my first attempt at creating a lifestyle set – I by no means think I’m a professional set designer, but I wanted to challenge myself. I envisaged this image working well as background imagery for their website, or catalogue and I always strive to push my creativity within commercial work. The short video you can see below depicts some set design – which consisted of trial and error and learning how much space to leave as well as how much I wanted to show. Around halfway through the video you can see a big change in the lighting: I used a one light set up here, consisting of one large 3x4” rectangular softbox over the products from the top and some large foam to bounce light in from the bottom. At first, I was happy with the set but have learnt during this process of becoming that why not test more – as you may prefer the outcome. I decided to experiment with some extra bounce card coming in from the left. The difference was huge! Looking back, I can’t imagine not making that small adjustment because of how much it brightened the overall set.

This shot was aimed to display the business decorating, alongside involving some of the extras the brand sent over – such as the wooden cut out of the Isle of Skye, the colour catalogue and their sample cards - therefore did not need much post-production besides small areas of brightening. On the back of this, I’d love to know - have you ever made a small change in your creative process that had a huge impact? Let’s chat in the comments!