Product shoot session

Last Thurs lunch time received a product shoot job. They emailed me the requirements, their budget, with an 'ASAP' as deadline... Hmm, aren't we all in a hurry! It's so urgent, client asked if I can do the shoot in the afternoon. Yeah right, if he could be satisfy with product photo taken by my iPhone - the closest thing I have on hand to a camera - I wouldn't mind ;) (Well, I actually I do mind... I wouldn't be able to get myself out of office in such short notice!)

Being a freelance photographer means we are supposedly to be the master of job juggling. I work full-time Mon.-Fri. normal office hour, so I'm on a Thurs. lunch break here. In next 30 mins., (what left of my lunch break) I started scrambling for rental studio space, generating a list of thing (lenses, lighting table, etc.) I need for the shoot, scheduled assistant, scheduled shoot on Sat. afternoon. Right after work, I went looking for a extension tube (for macro product shoot) - but I couldn't find what I needed. I ended up borrowing William's macro lens (thanks so much! I dunno how else I could have done the shoot in such short notice). Also bought a 'light table' that's big enough to accommondate the product that it will be resting on. Dragged the heavy table up to studio, borrowed Ray's Nikon and did some test shoot (about 9pm at night) so I can send it to client as reference later. That pretty much a wrap for a day of work.

Friday went by without much hitches, except client worried if we can have 50+ toy samples shoots at various angle/position in 3 hours time (which I quoted him on the job order). Original plan was to have 5 hrs shoot with 130+ items, but hours later, client revised it to 50+ items only. Honestly, I didn't know if I can have them all done - it's just my educated guess. By Friday night, client revised again - we are back to the original plan... shoot all 130+ items all at one session - and yup, we have to have it done in 5 hrs. I also promised to have all the photos 'tuned-and-edited-out-background' by Monday... "Ha! I bet you couldn't find another photographer to top that!"

So Sat. goes the shoot. Total studio usage time: 5 hours. Product item counts: 100+. Shot counts: 250+. Final image submits to client: 133. Lunch break: 0. We stopped at nothing. Just 5 straight hours of non-stop shoot.



(photo contain notes. click here to see it in flickr.)

I started working on post-process even before I reached home that night. I needed sit down to have a break with my heavy gears, so might as well do some cropping at the cafe.

Sun. afternoon started my image editing tour to hell. It's not difficult edits, but really time consuming.

By Mon. morning, I could only get about 80+ images done with 2 hours of sleep the night before. Off to work I go, and do uploading at office. Client couldn't wait for the rest of them for another day, so I uploaded the ones that haven't been processed too. By night, image process continues.

Tues. 4am - all done! Immediately upload to client's server. Good! Look, I still can catch about 3 hours of sleep before I leave home for office, ha!

Many thanks to William (for lending me his lens) as my assistant who had gone through the exhausting shooting with me on Sat. I bet his work role that day was harder than mine!