High-speed and macro liquid photography

The best example of these challenges can be seen in the above Soup set. In my research for this project, I found that many existing images around soups nearly always involve a still-life photo of the soup already in the pot or bowl. So while soup pouring is still arguably low-hanging fruit, I still wished for a baseline point of difference that I could continue in my lighting and styling. There, I went into the clean colour pairing of Castleton green and a creamy white, which I displayed in my choice of soup and ingredients and the background. While in lighting, I focused on creating clean reflections on the pot’s surface to elevate the product’s quality.

The final part, making everything “practical and safe” is undoubtedly my favourite part, however, it always poses the most challenges. In this particular shoot, I had the ever-so simple problem of suspending a pot in place, while also allowing me to tip it over. I was working alone for this shoot, and so my solution was to create a pulley system using rope and stands. As you can see from the photo below, I was successful in my goal. I used a large tub which was able to catch all the pouring soup and used ‘jewellery wire’ to suspend all the pieces of veggies. Piercing the pieces onto multiple wires, and then bending that wire, allowed me to have complete control of the spread, angle, and direction of each “falling” piece. While the tub was a simple solution to solve a usually annoying problem, the dreaded post-shoot clean up. However, in the end, all the forethought and planning were worth the final product in the end.  

These images were taken by the photographer Malachi Smith before starting collaborating with Zoom Studio. Read more about him here.

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Read more about our product photography here.

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