Color background product photography

These images were created to demonstrate that while most product photos use a white background, you can achieve interesting images using a colour background.

Using a white background is a very valid and important technique used for years in commercial photography. It isolates the product giving it importance.  It does not have any distraction from the product and the white background does not cause colour contamination, so, it shows perfect true colour. We often remove the background creating a transparent background mostly presented as pure white. This technique is good when creating pamphlets, websites and other marketing material but is not always the best solution for all products.

This article is an example of a product in which we did use a white background but did not remove the background. Click here.

This article talks about the backgrounds transparency and partial transparency.  Click here.

Let’s talk more about the colour selection for backgrounds and the use of props. I suggest you read about the colour wheel, colour science, the psychology of colours and how different the colours are perceived based on where the person comes from and cultural influence.

If you want to have a harmonious image, you can use analogous colours that are adjacent to the colour wheel. For example, oranges are close to red and yellow and when used together they create pleasing calm images.

If you want attention-grabbing images and punchy contrasting, we would use colours that are directly opposed on the colour wheel like oranges and blues or yellow and purple, red and green, etc.

You can notice that while using a colour background, we can vary the contrast and saturation of the product and background by positioning the lights and changing the lighting modifiers we use.  These images have soft shadows and are delicate and elegant. This article done a couple of years ago, shows a different take on the use of the colour background. Click here.

These images were taken by the photographer Malachi Smith in our studio. Malachi is collaborating with the studio bringing new ideas and techniques. Read more about him here.

Click on the images to see them larger

Read more about our product photography here.

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