Control the shot

One of the most challenging work in photography is to shoot products with highly reflective surfaces, especially when group them together.
This one, shot for Kohinoor - Crystalized with Swarovski, is a good example.  The set up of the product to reach a visual balance may not benefit the condition of photography, which means, the priority of the arrangement of the products is weighted far above whether it is easier to shoot.  And it is not.  The entire shot takes hours to set up while just 1/125s to actually shoot it, with Phase One P45 on Contax 645 + Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar 45-90/4.5.  Already mentioned a few times in this blog that I rated this lens with sharpness not inferior than many primes, especially at 2.5 meter range where I found it to have the highest level of sharpness.

In order to avoid the reflections on all the surface went crazy, the set up on a table, control the reflection all around, tilt the light box to achieve the nice shading with even illumination while not over burn the detail of  highly reflective surface of mirror polished stainless steel is the challenge, resulted here a shot with in fact minimum photoshop.
In to digital capture, many have the impression that most of the shots are the result of time consuming photoshop works, may be some are, but not all of them.  The highest quality work come directly from skilled photography, not skilled photoshop. And luckily in early 21 century, the fundament in classic photography is still required.