Medical Product Photography
Medical product photography shot for PBS Scientific. Featured here are bioreactors used to propagate stem cells for gene therapy. The challenge in this kind of assignment is the surfaces of the products were brushed stainless steel and no amount of elbow grease would remove all of the blemishes.
This was my first time shooting stainless steel products so I did not foresee the amount of post-production work involved in the photography assignment. Additionally, I should have been more diligent with the reflector setups to reduce post-production. There were also transparent products that had photographic challenges that I did not account for. My solution was to use negative fills on the corners to give the item shape but it was more work than I expected for this medical product photography project.
The lighting on this project was complex and involved a lot of plates, so reducing the number of plates will be a priority in the future. We had a large overhead softbox as the key then we added 6ft to 4ft reflector panels to capture the highlights. There were additional plates for details like the windows and cabling. The additional challenge was that I could not see all the products ahead of time to conceptualize the full scope of work involved. Normally when I am shooting healthcare photography projects that involve people, I can visualize the amount of work involved if we are shooting on location.
I am running into these issues more and more on my industrial shoots, so, in the future, I will change my rate structure to reflect the amount of probable post-production work involved in a photography project. Otherwise, too much work is involved to make it worth it. Every new turn I take in my career requires a new learning curve; this is another lesson I am learning the hard way.
