Bringing The Outdoors Inside For A Creative Photoshoot

Lifestyle photos are the best way to showcase your products creatively. No two concepts for a creative photoshoot are ever the same either which makes them so much more interesting to put together. This blog showcases one of our recent photoshoots that required bringing the forest into our studio.

One of the first steps to any creative photoshoot project is the idea. Our client wanted to showcase its camouflage range in its natural habitat of the outdoors. Located in the centre of Birmingham and confined to our studio, we decided to bring the wilderness inside for this shoot.

Despite how daunting it may sound to start building something natural indoors, it actually brings many benefits. One of them is absolute control over the lighting. The sun can be temperamental, and especially difficult when attempting to get consistent lighting as it moves positions during the day.

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We sourced our props from both a local park and our gardens. When sourcing props from the outdoors, it is essential to ensure you have the necessary permissions to take what you need. Plants, moss and logs could be home to thousands of different species. Disrupting them could not only get you into trouble but potentially cause damage to the natural ecosystem.

Setting up in the studio can be messy, especially when working with soil, and when taking product photos, you can be handling all sorts of props, from glitter to dried flowers. Check out our other behind the scenes blog where we used dried lavender here. One of the best ways to limit tidy-up time is to purchase some tarpaulin. (Easy tidy up is essential when you have a busy schedule.)

We started out by doubling up our tarp to fit the desired space and then marked out the corners of the frame using live view to ensure the structure was filled without wasting materials. I set the scene with a base layer of soil. Then, I added sheets of moss, it’s crucial that your moss/flowers are fresh or preserved. Dry or fake flowers can be unconvincing if you plan on keeping them in focus; however, if they are out of focus, fake flowers are a great alternative. Just check out this product photo below. The flowers in the background of this photoshoot are artificial. But they aren’t in focus, giving the impression of a beautiful vase of fresh flowers.

The caps are very well structured due to the material. However, to give them more shape, we utilised card strips on the mesh caps and stuffing to fill out the fabric ones. Filling out the caps also gave us more creative freedom with placement.

Using larger logs to prop up the caps, we built up the moss using twigs and dried leaves to give a beautiful forest effect. Then it was a matter of playing around with how the hats were positioned until they looked aesthetically pleasing. Our client wanted to incorporate some negative space as these photos will eventually become a banner with text.

Next, we moved onto putting together lighting that mimicked how the sun cuts through the trees’ branches and spills onto the forest floors. We used a bare bulb and a white card with a rectangle cut out to achieve this. This technique directed the light like streams of sunlight. We also chose to create rim light around the larger logs to create more depth whilst maintaining the natural lighting.

After some repositioning with the caps, it was time for the photoshoot. We took one initial image for the background and then individual shots of each hat with a spotlight on them. These additional shots will allow us to use post-production to make the caps pop within the background without altering the stunning “sunlight” effect.