For years our product shots sat on seamless paper. A roll of white or pale grey, swept from the wall to the floor, with no horizon and no shadow edge. It is clean and fast, and it makes everything look like a render.
This year we moved most product sets onto concrete: the studio floor at Lime House, a slab in the yard, and a loading bay in Al Quoz we borrow on Fridays.
What a grey floor tells you
Concrete has grain. Put a tube or a tin on it and you see its size at once, because the surface has a scale your eye already knows. On seamless, a 50 ml tube and a litre bottle can look the same.
It shows weight. A full can sits on a rough floor differently from an empty one. The shadow is short and dark, and it touches the surface. On paper, products float.
It is honest about colour. Grey concrete stays close to neutral in daylight. A green pack reads as the green the printer will match, not a green lifted by a white bounce.
It is honest about finish. A matte box looks matte. A gloss lid catches the light and shows a scratch if there is one. Founders see what their customers will see on a shelf.
Flux labels on the studio floor, its grain giving scale.
Seamless paper flatters everything, so it tells a founder nothing. A grey floor shows them what a customer will see.
Carlisle Stevens
Art Director
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Origin®
What we gave up
Concrete is harder to light. The surface swallows light in its pits and throws it back off the flat parts, so we use one large source and move it in small steps. Retouching takes longer too. Dust shows, and we keep the marks that belong to the floor.
It also costs a morning. Before each shoot we sweep the slab, mop it and wait for it to dry, because a damp patch reads darker on camera than the rest of the floor.
Cut-outs are harder. A product on seamless lifts off for an online shop in a minute. On concrete we shoot a second frame on white for the shop and keep the concrete frame for everything else.
When we still use white
Some products need the plain floor. Reform's range went on white, so the patchwork denim was the only colour in the frame. That was the right call for clothes made of a hundred blues.
The rule we use is short. If a customer will see the pack sitting on something, we shoot it sitting on something. If they will only ever see it on a screen, white is fine.
For packaging, the grey floor wins. A pack lives on a counter, a shelf or a table, never in a white void. We would rather show it somewhere it could be.
