How to photograph a plastic bag in 9 steps

The setup; umbrellas on the floor reflected natural light back into the creases and shadows

Taking a picture of a plastic bag may seem the most inane marketing task but it brings myriad complexities. Faced with an urgent last minute job for an important exhibition and only three wrinkled samples to work with, we were challenged. This is how we did it.

Given time and budget, you’d normally get this sort of thing specially made up in durable plastic. The translucency, the creases, the lack of rigidity in polythene all make for a hellish task.

The product itself here is a bit of genius. A very simple, cheap, but far reaching innovation created in Nottingham that has already improved patient safety. The idea is that before you come into a hospital for treatment, you collect all your prescribed pills and medicines and put them in a bag so that the clinicians can see what you’ve been taking. You might think that would be on your medical record, but if you know anything about medical records you’ll know that a. they can take a long time to collate and b. they are not a sure fire guarantee.

The first test shot. A shop of horrors.

So, back to the bag. A simple piece of partly translucent polythene with lots of writing on it. You have a semi-opaque and highly reflective surface, and a very boring one dimensional shape that doesn’t stay together unless its flat on the floor.

The first thing to do is stick the product on a simple white background and look at it. Take a few test shots. Move the product around, move the camera around. Get a good idea of what’s happening as this will stimulate you into solving the myriad issues.

If you look at the first shot, you can see the problems immediately. This is how we solved them:

1. Shoot the bag with something in it. This gives a rather tedious inanimate object some life.
2. Shoot the bag at an angle. This gives some depth to the plain rectangle.
3. Take from above (or below). This gives some vertical perspective angles which give power to the product. A plain rectangle looks more purposeful when given the wide shoulders “V” look.
4. Shape the bag. We cut some stiff photographic background paper to curve round and insert into the item. This allowed us to mould the bag to a more consistent, solid form.
5. Deal with the translucency. Unless your translucency is essential to the product look (eg a gel), try and get rid of it. Our paper inserts made our bag more or less opaque.
6. Don’t forget the peripheral bits. Our bag has handles. They flopped all over the place. We cut up last night’s pizza box to hold the handles upright.
7. Use anything you like out of shot to make it work. The final shot has lots of masking tape at the back to make the bag sit upright, just so. Ideally you’d have lots of product samples you can play with to destruction; you might need to make cuts and bends to make it all work. We only had three bags so were limited.


The Patient's Medicines Bag. Translucent, lots of writing, floppy. A photographic challenge.

8. Light the product imaginatively. This is easily the most important element. Experiment with light, moving things around until you get the reflections and detail you want. We have natural light here coming in on the left and two umbrella reflectors placed on the floor to the right just out of shot. Shoot a whole series of photos with your reflectors and main light coming in from different angles so you see the effects. The soft fill lighting will work to reduce the visiblity of creasing and wrinkling. Even the slightest movements will have a positive or deleterious effect, trust me.
9. Inevitably, you’re not going to get everything perfect and there will be some touching up to do post-shoot. We had to keep this to an absolute minimum since there was so much detailed text on the product, making retouching a tricky prospect.