Product Shots
Gloves. Gauntlets. Sleeves. If the company sells it, it may have required a photo for leaflets, catalogues, trade shows, the website, social media and emailers, turned over to customers for their own promotional effort, and more.
Different products have different needs. Gloves are simple… they fit on a “former”, or “hand mannequin”. Put them in the lightbox. Lights on the left, right and top for nice coverage and highlights.
I’ve worked out what I consider to be the optimal angles for both the palm and the back of the hand (they’re not the same – palm I tend to shoot head on, vertically, and slightly angled away horizontally, and back of hand I shoot at more of an angle in both to maximize how much of the index finger to thumb I’m showing off).
Gauntlets, since they never properly fit on one former, require multiple shots of each – one to capture the hand, and another to capture the forearm, and then require a ton of editing in Photoshop to stitch them together gracefully.
Sleeves I tend to shoot on my own arm, in a mirror, because I rarely have a model available and I certainly can’t fit one in a lightbox.
I try not to go overboard with the digital correction of textures and wrinkles and whatnot. No glove every fits absolutely seamlessly on a hand, and attempts to make it look absolutely perfect tend to just leave the whole prospect feeling fake.
Note the curvature of branding, the slight perspective and the glove texture added to make it look like the logo was always there and not just a digital edit. The palm texture is often very important as well, so care has to be taken to show that off. And finally, a shadow between the two sides to add some dimension and space between the two.
