Shooting perfume bottles: 4 hacks for creative high-end product shots
Capturing glass perfume bottles can be tricky - here’s how to create stunning product shots utilizing the full potential of our Profoto StyleShoots Eclipse with some handy tips.
Expressive and eye-catching visual content creates awareness for your brand and inspires your audience to visit your e-commerce or physical store to eventually convert. However, producing creative imagery of perfume bottles can be quite tricky. Fragrance bottles often feature a combination of reflective metal and glass, which makes them especially difficult to photograph.
Here’s how to create captivating output using our Profoto StyleShoots Eclipse with 4 effective hacks.
Hack #1: Don’t be the one to bite the dust
Before you start shooting, make sure your perfume bottle looks impeccable. You are about to put your product in the spotlight - dust and fingertips are a no-go but easily visible on reflective surfaces like glass and metal. Prepare your bottle by wiping it off with a microfiber cloth before shooting. Wearing gloves while positioning the item will save you time when finding the perfect angle for it to shine and later on in post-production.
To achieve this effect, we used the Eclipse’s built-in lighting as fill light in combination with a flashlight close to the bottle.
Hack #2: Play around with lighting
To reduce the chance of any unintentional color changes on the product or background, we recommend shooting in a room with as little external light as possible. Our Profoto StyleShoots Eclipse has front and side doors for full access during your product shoot. The inside of the machine, as well as all four doors, are fully white inside, letting the lighting bounce from every direction to make sure your object is evenly lit for the perfect e-commerce shot.
To switch things up, try leaving one or multiple doors open to create some depth. Leaving one or multiple doors open brings out highlights and texture of your products, elevating your content and making it more appealing to your audience.
Hack #3: Extra light equals extra dimension
Leaving the doors of the machine open also enables you to use additional light sources for extra effects. Playing around with external lighting helps to bring out the highlights in the glass of the perfume bottle and creates more dimension. Light effects or shadows make the bottle stand out more, creating an eye-catching effect for your editorial content. Experiment with the position and distance between light source and object to find out what works for your shoot with regard to highlights, shadows, and reflections. Doing so enables you to customize the look and feel of your imagery even more, giving it a rather personal touch.
No matter if you’re a pro-photographer or a visual content rookie - combining external light sources with the manual camera controls of the Profoto StyleShoots Eclipse enables you to create beautiful and original content.
Behind the scenes: Using external light sources to enhance the glass and metal highlights of the perfume bottle.
Output: Playing around with external light sources creates dimension and makes the product stand out.
Hack #4: Add some human touch
Using a (hand) model to show your product is a great way to emphasize its use cases or to make your audience aware of its dimensions. Showing a perfume bottle held in a model’s hand enables your audience to visualize using the product themselves, potentially initiating them to purchase eventually. Having a model hold your fragrance bottle is also great for round or asymmetrical bottles that can’t stand by themselves. When adding a human touch to your product photography make sure that the model doesn’t draw the attention away from the product.
Profoto StyleShoots Eclipse allows for various ways to elevate your perfume bottle product shots. Before shooting, make sure that your object looks spotless - remove dust and fingerprints with a microfiber cloth and wear gloves during the shoot. For those who want to go the extra mile, leaving one or multiple doors of the Eclipse open enables you to let natural light in or use external lighting to create extra effects and dimension. Get your audience to visualize what it’s like to use your fragrance by adding some human touch.
Our Profoto StyleShoots Eclipse is our all-in-one content solution that enables you to create stunning visual output of smaller objects - for your webshop product pages by streamlining your studio workflows, generating consistent angles and saving time in post-production. But also by freeing up time for creativity that your studio team can utilize to produce expressive imagery pushing the boundaries of product photography.