Product World Building
They were smiling on the Visual Media students with this one, haha – this blog assignment was appreciated!
The ask was to take a photo of a product within a visual “little world” or “story” around it. This assignment coincided nicely with another product shoot which we’d been assigned this week, so I got to practice styling this bottle of Walgreens aftershave before the bigger shoot, which also explains why I have a bottle of aftershave in my possession (in case you didn’t know, I have no use for that product, but it was in clearance and I’m a cheapskate hehe). It was also an interesting exercise to try taking a “professional” photo with my phone – curse the auto settings! I didn’t know how much I appreciated manual mode before battling with my phone’s idea of what it thought was a good exposure.
That said, I wanted to highlight the warm color of the aftershave and also pay homage to it’s Western influence – it’s Stetson after all (fun fact, there’s a Stetson in my family tree somewhere way back – that’s all my memory can pull up right now though XD ). I also wanted to put a bit of a modern twist on it with the white collared shirt and tie to show its versatility of being for anyone, ranch hand or city slicker.
The loose tie and unbuttoned shirt suggests a rebellious nature, a trait we might associate with a cowboy, while the aftershave’s box with an actual picture of a cowboy makes it clear about what this aftershave represents.
The guitar was an obvious choice for me since there’s there’s nothing that says gathering around the fire to tell yarns and sing ballads like a steel-stringed guitar. And it’s warm color paired perfectly with the honey-like hue of the aftershave.
This was a fun one! I made a few versions of this concept and wanted to share them as well since it was hard to choose which one to be my main photo to break down.
That’s all for now! I would love more blog assignments which are photography focused, but I know the amount of people who would benefit from that are outnumbered at least two or even three times haha.
