Walton Creative News Blog. A behind the camera look at WaltonCreative. With News, Photographs and Comments.

These shots were taken specifically to send to one of BD Foods' stockists, the foodservice company Thomas Ridley.

This time the sauces were from lots of different countries so there was no quick way to whizz through taking all the photos. Each one had to be planned in advance with props sourced from Ebay, in London or from my rapidly growing prop hire cupboards!

As the food itself is NOT the focal point of the photographs, I had to contrive a method of getting the sauces shown in a bowl or jug each time so that the customer would realise they were buying a sauce and not a ready meal.

The photographs are of sauces to accompany foods from: America, Africa, Britain, Mexico, Chinese, Japanese and Italian.

See more food photographs for BD Foods

See designs for the BD Foods website

I am now on version 4 of Turners catalogue. This time they want to have the prices printed separately so this left a large gap in all the layouts. I reworked the catalogue on a three column grid. Which also meant I could tighten up the of photos and add a lot more!

See photos for Turners

Ben at Bishop's Green Grocers wanted an e-commerce website but without the time to update the site with products each day I suggested a cut-down version that could be upgraded to e-commerce later when staff and funds become available.

When I took the shots for the website I used the lovely old baskets that were hidden on the top shelf to display the fruit and veg. I cheated a little by re-staging the displays to give a lush, rustic look.

Ben is aiming to refit the shop soon. Replacing the shop sign with my new design, which matches the website.

Visit Bishop's Green Grocers website.

Shots for the A2B Local website were taken on a Sunday at the industrial estate. The roller shutters gave the perfect neutral, industrial-looking backgrounds.

Using a long exposure made the package blurred, making the logo and models the focal point of the shots. 

I wanted a selection of images to choose from for the website so we also set up shots at various office doors as well. To light the inside as well as the outside bounced flash was used in the hallways to give a soft fill-in.

See how the shots were used on the A2B Local website.

I designed the website menu for BD Foods, based on a sample from each category of their product range. Initially I chose a selection of products of different colours and textures to make each one distinctive. I then shot all the background images first. This meant I could experiment with different textures and lighting without having to also worry about the spoons at the same time. A range of shots were taken of each background, I then set up the spoons, all shot on a plain grey background with the spoon held on a mould, so that it was always at the same angle and position, despite all the washing and cleaning in between photographs. All the spoon shots were then cutout and layered on top of their respective backgrounds in one file so that all the elements could be lined up accurately. Each of the backgrounds was then moved independently to achieve the best combination image. See how they work on the BD Foods website.

I am working on the website and designs for BD Foods in St. Leonard’s. Each of the products is supplied to different clients in different packaging, so to standardise the appearance on-line, I decided to shoot empty bottles and containers without labels.

Each of the containers was shot on its own, then cutout. This group shot was made up of different layers in Photoshop. By making some of the layers slightly see-through it was possible to give the effect of semi-transparent plastics. (See the two squeezy bottles in the middle of the group).

I have also shot example products to appear in the menu of the website. Plus a whole range of food shots to use on the website… more blog photos coming soon!

My latest brief from Nature’s best was to find a way to illustrate the supplement Co-Q10 known as the biochemical spark plug, giving an indication of its powers.

The previous packaging showed an actual spark plug. I suggested showing two tablets touching each other – inspired by the image of the fingers touching each other by Leonardo Da Vinci.

As the sparks were going to be the most unpredictable I shot these first. Making the whole studio light tight I pushed a sparker into black polyboard and shot directly from above. Sparklers only last a few seconds so I had to try a series of different shots to achieve the best sparks at the correct exposure.

This was the best shot taken at 1/160th sec at F3 ISO 200 using my fast 60mm lens.

The real capsules are tiny and covered in some sort of sticky substance that was a magnet to dust. The most practical solution, given the time, was to cheat and find a similar shaped capsule to use instead. The real tablets are solid opaque black, but the only ones I could find are these cod liver oil capsules which are clear dark bronze colour and not as fat as the real ones. None the less I felt I could fix all of these problems later in Photoshop.

I shot the row of tablets in different positions on black glass straight from above again, using flash this time. Two softboxes where put low down on either side of the  capsules to give long thin highlights.

The only part left to do now was choose the best shots and combine them in photoshop. The dust was still terrible despite all the cleaning along the way. For the final image I combined seven layers to produce this version, putting two sparks on top of each other and blending with vivid light to make them extra sparky.

Nature’s Best (the vitamin and food supplements company) asked me to take a series of photos for their January front cover, featuring of one of their range of winter-warming products – embedded in a giant ice cube!

I shot the ice cube on a sheet of frosted class, lit from below, with two other spots for back-lighting and a fill-in flash at the front.

The beauty of using frosted glass is that when the surface gets wet it turns nearly transparent – making the pool of water below the cube much more defined.

I had worried that the ice might melt too fast, but in fact we needed to use the client’s blowtorch to speed up the melting process!

David Janes at Classic Filters gave me the challenge to make their filters look appealing. The main problem with this kind of lighting is the DUST. Thankfully David brought some stainless steel polishing gloves which helped to buff them up and remove any finger prints. I shot each combination of filters on four different coloured backgrounds. Both as a shallow depth of field (as here) with lovely blurry backgrounds, as well as the more predictable pin sharp version. Once I was happy with the background and lighting I moved around the products to find their most flattering viewpoint. The filters are very heavy stainless steel, incredibly well-made and beautifully tactile. I think they could easily be sold in the Conran shop as works of art !

Congratulations to Olivia and Jack Gillies!

We all had a great time, thank you for inviting me. I hope you like the photographs! X

Copenhagen candles are launching their completely new range of scented candles at the Harrogate Home and Gift Show.

This time I had to create an advert using just the four products that had arrived so far. Unfortunately each one had something wrong with it, so a lot of retouching was needed to complete the shoot and the finished advert in a morning.

I used ultra-bright backlighting, under frosted glass and slight under-exposure to produce saturated colour. I particularly like how vibrantly-acidic the lime zest candles came out.

When the rest of the range arrives I will be re-shooting their entire range and creating their second catalogue. Read more about the first catalogue. Read more about the Copenhagen Candles website.

Copenhagen Candles are constantly changing their range of perfumed candles – and the packaging too.

These are a range of simple labels for their newest range of ultra-stylish candles with beautiful stainless steel lids.

All the shots where taken here in the studio, with a few cheats along the way. Vanilla flowers are hard to find, so this is in fact the bottom of a plastic milk bottle chopped up and yellow highlighter pen added to the back.

The baby powder had the bottom chopped of and then clamped to a stand. The powder could then be topped up without taking the set to pieces. The flow of powder looked ok but I thought maybe water or milk might give a more defined edge. Wrong! it just sloshed all over the studio floor, but worth a try. The final shot had the stream of powder retouched and curved down in photoshop.

The last shot is waiting for a little jewellery box ‘treasure chest’ to put the faux Frankincense and Myrrh into. I put a bid in for two on Ebay and managed to win both of them, so will have to see which of the two looks the best.

Having researched the Frankincense and Myrrh resins I found a remarkable likeness to them in sugar crystals and dried apricots! so watch this space to see what the final shot looks like.

More shots in my rustic, yet modern-look. I like the combination of gingham fabric and fluffy string.

If I ever manage to find my rustic, paint-peeled background, shots like this can be taken further back. I can then also shoot them with low dramatic lighting, as if they were in a pantry.

In years gone by it was possible to get a piece of worn out pine for next to nothing – not any more. Now its characterless laminates or expensive antiques.

I love the combination of food and glass. The addition of movement, from the salt being poured over the lemons really makes the photo zing. 

The shots were lit through from below frosted glass and from behind with a low spot light to make the salt sparkle.

The lemons were then shot at each of the stages of the preserving recipe. They are meant to be ready to use in three weeks.

To be fashionably frugal I suppose I ought to be using cheap, misshapen food, but it just doesn’t feel right with this kind of shot…. see below!

I enjoyed shooting the Christmas biscuits so much, that I thought I would try shooting cup cakes next. By coincidence I found the little eggs in Julian Graves, hence the Easter theme. The recipe called for chilli powder in the cupcake mix, but I thought this might show as specks in the photograph. I put the chilli powder in the chocolate topping instead.  I tried the combination of chilli and chocolate in Puebla, Mexico last year. It sounds a strange combination but works really well.

With only a few days left until Christmas, I can pack up all my home made biscuits and photograph them. The first batch of biscuits, looked and tasted ok – but didn’t fit the boxes properly! so the latest ones are smaller hearts and stars that fit better. Again very high-key with my f1.4 lens has given lovely soft foreground and background, with pin-sharp biscuits.

Three large biscuits didn’t fit the boxes, so these have turned into hanging stars and another photo to send to the Alamy photo library.

I wanted to give biscuits for Christmas presents this year so took the opportunity to photograph them being made. I had originally imagined solid, star-shaped biscuits, then discovered if I used a smaller cutter as well, I could make weight watcher's biscuits too! The biscuit cutters also came in a heart-shaped version, so I couldn't resist making these as well. Maybe the photo might sell on Alamy for Valentines day? The biscuits were shot with a new f1.4 lens so I could achieve an incredibly shallow depth of field. I wanted the shots to be very bright and high-key so took the ginger biscuits out of the oven early to avoid them looking too dark. The next stage is to shoot the biscuits being packed into their boxes and tied with ribbon. Watch this space!

I saw this lovely marzipan Santa on a recent trip to Budapest. I wanted a solid background – which would have to be much larger than a real cake would be. So (as usual) I managed to make a simple idea a lot more complicated by creating a lake of false icing to sit him on.

I had hoped for that lovely spiky icing I have created lots of times before to disguise a rough top. But this time whatever I did the icing looked like either mashed potato or rice pudding!

To make matters even more complicated I had the idea of a giant knife cutting into the cake to make the most of Santa’s lovely anxious expression – to look as if he was worried about being chopped.

So the plan was to buy a small piece of real Christmas cake and to insert it into the fake lake of icing…. Well actually it worked, the only problem in the end was that the knife looked far too inappropriate for a Christmas card – well you can’t say I didn’t make an effort!

Autumn shots for Chilstone to accompany their new website which I am designing at the moment. I am really hoping for some thick snow soon which would look fabulous around their pots and sculptures!