BLOG

Firearms Photography

by Scott Lanza August 16, 2019 in Firearms Photography, Studio Photography 0 comments tags: Conceal Carry, Firearms Photography, MC1sc Handgun, OF Mossberg & Sons

Recently I’ve expanded my product photography work to include photographing firearms. This started a few years ago when I shot my first project for O.F. Mossberg and Sons with Shine United. The most recent work was completed photographing the introduction of the MC1sc handgun, the first handgun manufactured by Mossberg in 100 years. The photographs were used for print and web and included two new shotguns, Retro 590 and Retro 590A1. I hold a valid Type 1 Federal Firearms License to facilitate the transfer of proprietary client products and eliminate the necessity of a third party license holder. Firearms can be shipped straight to my studio.

Shine United: O.F. Mossberg & Sons

by Scott Lanza June 27, 2017 in Product Photography, Shoot Details, Studio Photography 0 comments tags: How Too, Product Photography

Creating Work With a Bang. I recently had the opportunity to work with my friend John Krull, Creative Director at Shine United, photographing rifles and shotguns for O.F. Mossberg & Sons. Our task: Creating trade show visuals for the 39th annual, 2017 SHOT Show in Las Vegas. The process: Figuring out and designing the set took a little experimenting. First, the guns are very long — so how do you photograph them without distortion (while making them look as awesome, and accurate, in reproduction as they do in person). And second, how can you do a tabletop shoot of the rifles versus building a suspension rig. Lighting Since the rifles would be shown in front of various background colors, I decided to backlight the rifles using a specially constructed light table. This created some rim light and also helped with outlining the rifles. Lens selection Experimenting with various focal length lenses — the 55mm on a SINAR P3 and eVolution 75 digital back produced a perspective that was way too extreme! Especially the shotguns, which have very long barrels to begin with. After a round tinkering with lenses and angles I decided to go with the 90mm, which worked well […]

Shine United / Huhot Mongolian Grill

by Scott Lanza February 15, 2017 in Food Photography, Shoot Details 0 comments tags: Food Photography, Product Photography

I recently shot a project for Eric Cook from Shine United in Madison for their client Huhot Mongolian Grill! These visuals are going to be used as animated social media ads. The theme of the ad series is “Conquer Bland” and married bad looking food with weapons! Interesting combination I thought but none the less the shoot was fun! The first time I hired a food stylist to make the food look not very appealing! Kind of counter intuitive for the food stylist! Eric found the weapons we’d be using, a medieval battle axe and knife, found on eBay and had hand made arrows made in the same vane to attack the food! So approached the shoot as usual with some preproduction planning and pre lighting for the best end result for the animations. Pretty much a straight forward shoot keeping in mind that the shots will be animated later for the various social media channels they’ll be used in! Scott

Shine United, Gore-Tex Ads

by Scott Lanza January 24, 2017 in Product Photography, Shoot Details, Studio Photography 0 comments tags: Product Photography, Shoe Photography

Got some good news the other day from Eric Cook at Shine United. Eric art directed a series of consumer ads for Gore-Tex that I had the pleasure of photographing. The ads won a Gold award in this years Graphis Competitions Advertising Annual. The ads consisted of lifestyle photos of runners and studio shots of running shoes that incorporated the Gore-Tex product. I photographed the studio portion of the ad series. Studio shots consisted of three different pairs of running shoes with various weather elements, snow, water and mud to illustrate the protective properties of the Gore-Tex materials in the shoes! Also, photographed a series of different shoe brands that include the Gore-Tex material for spot visual in spread ads. Here’s a link to the Graphis Annual: http://www.graphis.com/entry/b9862224-8226-4552-ad04-e22fce18f7fe/

WMMB Grilled Cheese Academy 2016 Recipe Winners

by Scott Lanza September 16, 2016 in Food Photography, Shoot Details, Studio Photography 0 comments tags: Food, Grilled Cheese Academy, How Too, Photography, Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board

This past July, the annual winning recipes from the WMMB Grilled Cheese Academy “2016 Grilled Cheese Recipe Showdown” were photographed at my studio! Joining me on the 3 day shoot ( the first day was prep and then two shoot days ) were the fabulous and reliable crew that I’ve had the pleasure to work with since the very first “Cheese & Burger Society” shoot from 2009. That group consists of, from Shine United, the agency, AD John Krull, AE Corissa Bielefeldt, the client Dave Bavinka, my production assistant Sandie Borowski, and the fabulous food stylist team of Vanessa Dubiel and her assistants Thomas Sherman and Christina Zerkis! The project started out with prepping the studio with the two sets we use, the first for the three winners which is the same set and lighting scheme used when we shot the very first grilled cheese sandwiches for the original website, the second a daylight simulating environmental set for the runner up recipes. Also some hardware setup that I do which consists of the wiring up the 60Amp service for the 3 foot griddle I rent for the shoot and prepping the kitchen for the intense 2 days of activity! I […]

The Wisconsin Cheese Cupid Project

by Scott Lanza September 07, 2016 in Shoot Details 0 comments tags: Food, How Too, Photography, Wisconsin Cheese Cupid, Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board

A bunch of years ago I was asked by John Krull, then senior art director at the time, at a new Madison ad agency, Shine United to photograph imagery for a new Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board website. The website, Wisconsin Cheese Cupid is a beverage and Wisconsin cheese online pairing guide. The project consisted of photographing beverages ranging from wines, champagnes to beers and liquors along with the cheeses featured on the site. The cheese shots were pretty straight forward but the beverage shots were another story! We used a Riedel Glassware “Wine & Glass Guide” brochure for reference as how we wanted the glassware to look on the site! At first glance shooting the glassware against a black background with strong rim light looked starlight forward. Not! We realized that shooting the glassware and getting the same look as the Riedel brochure would take more that a single shot because of how the rim light reflected in the opposite side of the glass from the light source! We would need to shoot the glassware then, Chad Bollenbach, Shine’s brilliant retoucher would crop down the center in Photo Shop and duplicate the good side and flop it! Because we […]

The Great Cheese Makers Awards Caper

by Scott Lanza July 13, 2016 in Shoot Details 0 comments tags: Cheese Makers, Lighting, People, Photography, WCMA Awards

This year my friend Matt from Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board asked me to shoot the winners of the World Champion Cheese Contest sponsored by Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association downtown at the Wisconsin Center. This shoot came in the middle of the WMMB 2017 Tool Box shoot that was in full gear at my studio that week. We cut our recipe shoot short that day, packed up the gear, background and headed downtown, joined by my trusty side kick and friend Mark Derse, who helped out with lighting set up and general wrangling and positioning of the winners as they filed through our lighting gauntlet. Matt warned me that it would be a fast and furious pace as there were going to be hundreds of cheese makers to photograph and little time with each! He wasn’t kidding!! At first, the pace was manageable but soon there was a line all the way back to the awards stage. I had only time to make one capture of each subject, waited for it to pop up on the computer screen, do a quick glance to be sure eyes were open and nothing weird going on, then on to the next! This went on […]