A bit late on this post as this was a job back in July. Manukora honey had been in touch to capture some macro shots of some of their ranges which will end up on their new packaging for the export market.

Part of the brief from the client was that the product needed three dimensionality along with specular highlights and the core honey elements must both be visible and well lit. Each shot is the size of your fingernail! Now image trying to work out how you can achieve lighting this to client requirements and without reflections as its highly reflective. After an hour of so of planning how to light it, I then needed to work out what kit I’d need to pull this off. As you can see from the BTS shots below it was a mass of grip and gear to capture images of a product so small. This is what I used-

• 11 C Stands of various sizes
• 5 Elinchrom Pro HD Lights
• 3 Lee Filters 216 scrims
• 1 clear sheet Plexiglass
• 12 Manfrotto clamps
• 1 foba stand

The set up alone and lighting tests to get these shots was a three hour job and luckily I was ably assisted by Eve at Manukora who was in charge of creating the honey drops on the plexiglass.

This was really challenging but fun shoot and thankfully Monica my retoucher was on hand for the post production in photoshop!

In need of some stunning food or drink imagery for your business? Get in touch I’d love to help derek@dereksmith.co.nz

Look forward to speaking soon

Derek