Last week I had the pleasure of working with KAN, a company that produces high-quality knives made in a Japanese process similar to the one Samurai blades were made with anciently. They wanted images that had a high-end feeling and emphasized the hammered texture as well as the lines from the folds in the metal. I delivered 23 images of 4 products total. This included shots for Amazon, Kickstarter, an environment shot, packaging images and closeups for their website.
I enjoyed working on this because this product was a challenge to get right. The blades are very reflective like a mirror, they have a dimensional texture (on the hammered ones) and the fold lines are only visible at certain angles or with certain light, and have no dimension. As a photographer, this means shooting the blades in a way where they receive the light in a flattering way to look like shiny metal, but without any reflections from objects in the room, my camera, or me. Then I have to do this in a way where the hammered dimples show up, and do both of those things while bringing out the fold lines, which show up best when something black is reflected back into the blade (which ruins the first two goals).
I had to shoot them on white, on black, and I added a wood-grain texture on some of the eye-candy shots to repeat the wood-grain look of the folds.
On this image, I experimented with light-painting as an option to get precise lighting that would be difficult to achieve using strobe lighting. With a 30-second-exposure, the light source dim and very close to the knife, I was able to avoid any reflections from the objects in the room, make the etched logo visible and achieve the other goals I mentioned above. Light painting didn't make sense for all the shots, so this is the only one that received the treatment.
I've enjoyed working with some of my repeat clients like this one on new and interesting products that challenge me and make my brain throb a bit.
If you're looking for someone reliable who can produce professional images of your products and do it quickly, send a message via my contact form and I'll let you know where to send or drop your products.