On this video professional photographer, Karl Taylor and Swiss photographer Urs Recher take a look at shooting a small black product on a black background.
Shooting a black product on a black background – especially one as glossy and complex as the one that Taylor and Recher try to shoot in this video is pretty complex. For this video, Tyler decided to use only two lights – a powerful one inside a huge rectangular softbox and a smaller closer one.
The one in the huge softbox is meant to give some graduation to the rim light of the product together with an extra diffuser (if you remove the diffuser you get a much harder rim which we actually like better – but that is a matter of taste).
In the front Taylor did a few clever things including only providing a small part of the black background which he later extended in post (the idea was to get the rim light from the back which was impossible if the entire back of the image was dark).
Taylor also used a small mirror and an interesting window mask flag to stop the flare (this DIY solution actually seems to cover part of the lens – however for this shot since it is black on black it doesn’t really matter since Taylor is only interested in what is in the middle of the frame).
Bonus video: Taylor and Recher shooting a white product on a white background
You can find many more product photography related videos on our dedicated product photography on our technique section. You can also find many more helpful photography tips on our Photography tips section.
Iddo Genuth 
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