Picture Sunday: shooting the Sennheiser HD700

The star of this weeks’s Picture Sunday is the HD700. Check out our other Picture Posts Here, Here, and Here.

Late 2012, The Headphone Book hired me to shoot a couple of images for their spring catalogue. It was my first commercial shoot in several years, and the first I had done without proper equipment. To my name, I had the following Nikon strobes: SB24, SB28, and SB700. I also had a Nikon D800 and a Zeiss 100/2 Macro Ai lens and a 600mm x 600mm black acrylic board. They needed the photos pronto. I huffed it to the nearest home centre (a two minute walk) and came back, squared away. In my hands were two squares, both styrene, both roughly 5mm thick.

I propped them up on pillows, about a metre from either side of the headphone, and a final flash hitting the back of the acrylic board. It was a tight fit. But the output was good, and I had my first client since 2009 or 2010 or so. Woohoo! Today I use much larger lights, but employ the same principles: shine light on what’s important, angling the object to show off its best stuff. That’s all it takes.

Of course, headphones – cables in particular – can be tricky to shoot. In order to make good images, you have to be inventive (and sometimes destructive). But a little bit of equipment can go a long way. I ended up writing a bit about the HD700, particularly happy about how comfy it was. My first year back was tough: I didn’t have the dosh to purchase a studio, so I made do with sub-par space. Now I have a clutch of good clients, a dedicated macro photography studio, and headphones and earphones and jewelry on the brain and behind the lens 24/7.

Relevant links

L’s take on the HD700
Sennheiser HD700 Unboxing