Improving the product shot: use context to define meaning. (Photo Critique).

Participants in my Communicating with Pictures workshops frequently express frustration with the ubiquitous product shot. "What can I do to make pictures of our products more interesting?" they ask. "When you've seen one picture of a box of cereal, an electrical transformer or a bottle of medicine, you've seen 'em all."

Improving product shots goes beyond making them "interesting." Instead of superficially describing the appearance of the same products on film over and over again, I show my workshoppers how to put them into a context that defines meaning, telling a story or making a point about them to viewers.

For example, a picture of a bottle of medicine is not going to say very much to anyone. Instead, photographers should find out how that medicine can benefit a patient, and then try to capture the benefits on film. And it's not the appearance of a transformer itself that carries a message to a viewer. Rather, that transformer's story is best told through pictures that define its function, size, advantages or placement, as well as expressing the efforts of those who manufacture, sell and maintain it.

All three product shots on the facing page are the same--spools of wire--yet each picture tells a different story because of the context in which that wire appears.

All were made by freelancer Robert Clark for SCANA Insights (SCANA Corp., Columbia, S.C.) at Strand-Tech Martin, a client of SCANA subsidiary South Carolina Energy and Gas.

In the first example, the SCE&G account manager is being shown some wire by Strand-Tech Martin personnel. He seems to be trying to get a better idea of his client's energy needs. This shot does not describe the appearance of the product itself. Rather, the wire provides context for the discussion that is the subject of this picture.

Clark's second example communicates the scale of both the wire and the energy requirements needed to manufacture it. His vantage point puts the wire in the context of the manufacturing plant itself--a building that stretches into the deep background. The shot gives us an idea of how much wire is made here. Its caption tells us that this wire is drawn and stranded in continuous lengths, 28 tons at a time.

SCANA Insights editor Mary Green Brown runs Clark's third example a full page in size to emphasize its detail. Clark changes context entirely by moving in on an arrangement of five massive spools of wire to abstract them. He uses side lighting to bring out the texture of the strands of wire. We see only a part of each of the five massive spools, yet all of them touch each other, rhythmically merging into a portrait of strength. Clark's image is all about bonding, and that's what this wire is designed to do.

Philip N. Douglis, ABC, is director of The Douglis Visual Workshops. He can be reached at [e-mail]. He offers a comprehensive six-person Communicating with Pictures workshop every May and October in Oak Creek Canyon near Sedona, Ariz.