You Can Use a Flat Screen TV as a Cheap and Simple Backdrop for Product Photos

Dec 19, 2015

Rafal Krasa

dollsnow

As my startup gear brand Eupidere grows, we face more and more photographic challenges in shooting thrifty product photos. Recently, I had just minutes to come up with an image that is a) eye catching, and b) Christmas related. There are lots of Christmas decorations around right now and the little guy above, wearing striped pajamas, is one of them. We decided to put him into a winter scenery and wish everyone Merry Christmas.

The idea seemed to be complicated, but in the end it wasn’t. The snow piles in the foreground were made of sheets of white paper and the background is simply a flat screen TV displaying an image of a night sky. The subject was lit with a hot shoe mounted flash, pointed to the right and bounced off a nearby wall. Shooting took 10 minutes at most.

dollsnowback

Two years ago, we did the same thing with a macro product shot of a ring. In that shoow, I used the Playstation 3’s menu system, which is capable of displaying different themes. The reflective surface was the base of a wine glass. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at that shoot (sorry, it’s not in English):

ringphoto

Here’s the ring photo that resulted:

ring

And that’s how you can incorporate a flat screen TV into some cheap, do-it-yourself product photo shoots.

P.S. If you enjoyed this idea, be sure to check out how I shot commercial product photos in a bathtub.

About the author: Rafał Krasa is a photographer based in Poland, and one half of the photography business DR5000 and the gear brand Eupidere. This article also appeared here.