Why The Camera Must Always Lie For Packshot Photography
Why The Camera Must Always Lie For Packshot Photography
If you're a small business owner thinking of doing your own packshot photography then there are a few points worth considering. Because when it comes to packshot photography and creating catalogue photo images there's a good deal that's often not understood by those who assume such images are little more than photographs.
A photograph can be one of two things. It can be either a snapshot of an object, person, group or scene as captured by an artificial lens, providing a limited impression of what was originally seen, or it can be a visual representation of what the photographer wanted to convey to the audience.
Those two things are not the same, and it's worth keeping in mind that whoever originally suggested that the camera doesn't lie was not involved in either packshot photography or advertising. Not only does the camera lie, it is essential for any catalogue photo to be effective that the camera is made to lie. But don't think that this is a negative thing.
Lies might be distasteful and you may suggest that your business has no truck with lies or mistruths. But unless you enjoy looking after your stock so much you can't bear to part with it, making sure the camera lies is all part of making sure your products sell. There's a very good reason why it's important to accept the fact that cameras can be used in this way, and it's the simple fact that cameras and eyes work in different ways.
For many people this is actually a surprise, but even those who realise that the human eye and a camera lens work in quite different ways fail to appreciate the significance of this fact.
When you look at an object the human eye can only actually focus on a very small part of the object. When you look around you at the world the area you see which is actually in focus is about the size of a full stop, yet you don't realise this because your eye is constantly moving all over the object and the scene. It's a little like looking at a jigsaw puzzle, and being able to see only one puzzle piece at a time.
But you don't realise this limitation because of the fact that your eye moves so quickly over the whole collection of pieces, and the brain is ever so good at stitching those separate images together to create a whole image. The whole process takes so little time and is so smoothly done that you don't realise it.
As you glance from darkly lit sections of the scene your eye adjusts to let in more light, and then when you look towards brighter parts of the image the eye reduces the amount of light let in so that you are able to focus on those parts of the scene close up, those further away, those well lit, those parts which may be darker or in shadow, giving you a version of reality which is quite beyond a camera lens.
Because a camera lens can only take a single snapshot, with a single degree of focus, and only a single aperture setting allowing in light at a single setting, the result is insufficient for packshot photography, because a catalogue photo taken with a camera will only provide one single piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
What's needed is to use a camera in a much cleverer way when carrying out packshot photography, achieving what the human eye does naturally, but faking the way a camera sees the world. If you're thinking about carrying out your own packshot photography or creating your own catalogue photo images then it's important to remember that the camera must lie, but convincingly.
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