There tends to be a lot of thinking and planning that goes into my product photography shoots before I do them. I usually get brief ideas of what I want to do and then I look at google. On google, I search up images that I feel follow the idea that I have in my head. I usually end up looking at multiple photos online for the idea of how I want my photo to look. I will then take the photos and ideas I've found online to make a mood board. I make this mood board using Padlet.
I take the elements from different photos and the ideas in my head and combined them. The notes on my mood boards are of just that, what elements of the photos I'm going to be using in my photo. Also in my mood board, I put to write down all the equipment and props I need so that it's like a checklist to make sure that on the day of shooting I have everything I need with me. This is pretty important as if I have gone into the studio to shoot and have forgotten something I need it could be a problem. Maybe because I’m not able to go out again to go get it and if I can it just wastes my shooting time. It could also be more costly as we are know how all the little purchases can add up. I'm wasting money and time going to the store on something I forgot at home (I can't just go back home as I live an hour away from my school). Then if I can't go buy it or get it quality my plan for my shoot is basically ruined. So all in all I want to be prepared with everything the day before a shoot so I don't waste shooting time.
Now on the shoot, I’ll just go ahead and give the rundown on how I set up and get to shooting. I set up all my equipment, lights, camera, and then I open up my laptop. I connect it to my cameras and open up Capture One. I always shoot tethered when I can because you really can’t see your photo properly on the camera's little screen. There's been a lot of photos I've taken in the past that I thought were in perfect focus after looking at my camera screen but after uploading them to my laptop, I've ended up disappointed.
After doing that I set my photo sense up and take a photo. Then in Capture One, I use the white balance tool to fix my white balance. I then just keep shooting and playing around with my subject and lights. I always try out multiple lighting techniques. I take many many photos with each and then decide later on what one I fancy the most. After my shoot, I go through my photos deleting the test shoots and the blurry ones. I then take a close look at each other making note of the ones I like and delete the ones I don't.
When I go to do the editing software I use is Photoshop. After I do my editing I like to take a day and not look at it. I do this because I think after looking at it for so long when editing you need a break to come back later on in the day or the next day to take another look. After taking the break and coming back to it, I usually find things that I want to change or fix. One thing that most commonly happens to me is that when I do the first round of editing there's always one part of the photo I hyper-focus on way too much and I want to try to make it look so perfect that when I can’t, I think the whole photo looks horrible. So having this break away from it allows me to reset.