Last month I was lucky enough to do an assignment for Verve Marketing & Design photographing shovels made by Forest Hill Manufacturing, LLC.

Having worked in a catalog house in New York when I first started out, I did lots of product shots. One of our accounts was for JC Penney’s catalog. So all those little knick-knacks you used to see in those catalogs, that’s what I did.

Being a photographer, we always have to make things look better than what they may be - everything from events to product shots. I call it “visually lying.” At events, I try to make it look as exciting as possible, as crowded as possible, so that when you see those images you would definitely not want to miss that event next year.

With product shots, I always approach as if I were shooting jewelry. I love jewelry shops. Jewelry shops are specifically constructed to get you to buy their products. Well, every store is, basically. But when you walk into a jewelry shop and look at those rings, they are so sparkly because in the ceiling of that shop are these little tiny spotlights. You could be looking at an orange underneath those lights and suddenly want to spend a few thousand dollars on it. So whenever I buy jewelry, I always look at it under a shadow to see what it would look like in our house.

I guess it’s all a part of marketing. And that’s what I do - help people market their products. Like our tag line says, “We create images that promote and showcase your company, your product, and your people.”

So when I do product shots, I treat them like jewelry. Guitars would come in for a shoot for Guitar Shop magazine and I always made the effort to photograph them so that they looked absolutely gorgeous. When you photograph an object, you try to highlight the shape of it, sometimes even the strength of it, and always the beauty of it.

People always ask me what I like photographing the best. As you know, I just like photography. And I always love a challenge. Sometimes when you hear the word “challenge” it implies that you don’t know how to do something. With photography, I think if it’s a “challenge” you know how to do it but always want to push it two or three steps farther to make it a stronger image, a more intense image, a more marketable image.

So, in closing, I would like to thank all my friends and colleagues who comment on April’s Photo of the Month. May’s Photo of the Month is dedicated to all my colleagues who tell me, “you should talk more about what you do.” I hold firm that there’s more to life than just work, so that’s why I like to mix it up a little bit.

Now that the cold weather has broken, I hope everybody has a fantastic Memorial Day.

Oh! And one other thing. I didn’t give a shout out to all the mothers out there this month! I believe a mother is anyone who takes care of other people. That means you don’t have to be someone’s birth mother, or even an older person helping out a younger person. You just have to do what you can to help out other people.

Okay everybody, talk to you next month!

- Kevin S. Nash

Photo details: Product shot of Forest Hill Manufacturing, LLC, shovels for Verve Marketing & Design.