Clean, sharp images to sell your products.

Give your customers the right impression.

Let's face it, you wouldn't produce an ad or news without pics. That went out in the 40's, and if you read a 40's newspaper, you'll see what I mean. In today's digital world, it's easy to produce photographs, even using your mobile, but are those product photographs as good as mine? When you look at it, you'll notice the difference is not in the megapixels, it's in the product lighting, and that's my selling point.
High quality photographs give your customers the impression that your selling high quality items, and that can only improve your business.

About the Portfolio

I've designed this portfolio to look like a shop because most of my photography is being used this way. Walk down the aisle, see an item you're interested in, and look closely at the detail. On this website choose a group, and click on an item you're interested in enlarging into the panel on the left. There's 8 groups of 80 items, mixed to keep it colourful and interesting. The first 495 (Up to group7 - eyelashes) are selected from the photography for The Clicks Group, and all were shot during my last year in Cape Town. This client had a special department of very talented people for clipping and page make-up, so the images were supplied without clipping paths. All were shot in my studio, at hi-res 300dpi for press usage onto coated media, and supplied to the client in reduced size CMYK format, immediately, on CDRom disks. At the end of each month, that month's full size images were burned onto DVD disks, and supplied with thumbnail "contact" colour prints for their archive/ library records.
The next batch of 100 images (up to Group8- gold beetles) were shot for FES, initially for brochure usage, and supplied with clipping paths.
The last batch were all shot for Catapult Advertising, with clipping paths, and show cosmetic packshots, and the stages of achieving that perfect bottle packshot, from production line products. As I said above, the biggest contributor to the quality of the images are the lighting set-ups, often using up to 8 flash heads, with a multitude of light shapers and reflectors. I hope this portfolio proves my point that quality matters.

Clipping paths (cut outs)

High resolution clipping paths (deep etching to the old timers, cut-outs to the new timers) can be drawn on the images, to seperate items from existing inappropriate backgrounds, and allow them to be dropped onto white or other designs. To compete with the best, I spent many hours perfecting this skill, but it remains time consuming. I charge seperately for this service. Quite a few of my Cape Town graphic designer clients preferred me to do this part of the production process, and it's now become routine.

Retouching

About three quarters of the time spent on each image is spent sitting at the computer, cleaning up and retouching items that have been badly printed, or have been crunched or buckled before arrival at the studio, and I now consider myself quite an expert image retoucher. Most retouching is included in the price, but I do charge extra, if the work becomes time consuming beyond the normal.

Equipment

My images speak for themselves, but for those interested, I use Nikon cameras and lenses, Ellinchrom flash lighting, Manfrotto tripods and stands, PC/Wintel computers, Adobe software and Epson printers and inks, to produce work efficiently, for a multitude of purposes.

Contact me, for a fast and efficient "elliott images" service.