I was asked to shoot a set of cups yesterday and I decided to do it with a bit of a lifestyle twist. So what is a lifestyle shoot as opposed to the the normal product shoot? It’s hard to define but I take it as shooting a product with a certain styling and props to simulate a real scene. Unlike a product shoot for a catalog which is normally shot on a clean background, the lifestyle shoot shows the product being ‘used’. These shots tend to create interest and draw the viewers. Props are selected for this effect to demonstrate usage but should not get too much attention.

For this simple shoot, the props I introduced were:
1. Table cloth
2. Chocolate cake (I wanted black forest cake for the additional colour but couldn’t get it from the neighborhood bakery)
3. Fork and spoon
4. Serving plate
5. Coffee (with wrapper included – this was required to be a part of the scene too)

I wanted the scene to be bright, like at morning breakfast. So colour was towards blueish. To throw light onto the logo on the cups and the cake in the background, I used a Speedlite mounted on a stand with an umbrella to soften the light. I positioned the light on camera right so that the texture of the cake can be seen, and to emphasise the logo on the cups. I gave a bit more details on the umbrella here. The Speedlite was triggered by a remote transmitter on my camera. I was also careful not to introduce extra shadows especially with different directions. If that happens, you can tell there were two sources of light and that’s definitely not natural. The idea was to make the scene as real as possible, while using lights to create emphasis.

This what the entire setup looked like: