©Frasershot

Each month we highlight a certain item in Profoto’s rich assortment of Light Shaping Tools (if you want to browse through previous articles, click here). This month we talk to Craig Fraser at Frasershot Studios about his favorite bit of kit: the ProBox.

Northampton-based Frasershot Studios is a small team of photographers and videographers; each specialized in a certain niche of photography. Together they are capable of handling almost any assignment – editorial spreads, corporate portraits, architectural studies, etc.

Craig Fraser, the man who founded and gave name to the studio, manages food and product photography. But Craig does not shoot just any food. He has found himself a niche within a niche, shooting spectacular dishes prepared by celebrity chefs at Michelin starred restaurants.

“It’s lovely to work with such talented people,” says Craig. “The only downside is that you can hardly ever move anything on the plate. That would be like telling the chef to change his presentation. It’s a respect thing, really. They rightly consider their dishes to be pieces of art, so you just have to use lighting to the best of your knowledge and work around that.”

How do you do that?

“I think that regardless of what product you’re shooting, you have to take a closer look at what’s unique about it. What are its unique selling points, so to speak? Whatever that is, that’s what you should focus on. For instance, I recently used the ProBox to shoot a pair of shoes for a company called Crockett & Jones. These shoes cost approximately £500.00, and there are more than 200 different process involved in making just one of them. So the quality of the leather is key, and that’s what you want to show.”

How does the ProBox help you do that?

“You can’t just throw light all over the place. You have to be subtle and in absolute control of the highlights, and the ProBox is great for that. Unlike a softbox, where you have a large light source with a gradual fall-off and soft edges, the ProBox gives you a smaller, perfectly even edge-to-edge light with really sharp edges. I also like the fact that it’s so easy to work with. With the modeling light turned on, you can physically see the highlights change shape and intensity as you reposition and set your lights. It makes my job so much easier.” (more…)

Remember the crew at Frasershot Studios who shot James Bond’s shoes? The team’s latest behind-the-scenes video sees them returning to their speciality: food photography, and this time it is the Michelin starred restaurant Texture that require their expertise.

“We set the shoot using Profoto D4 power packs and 3 heads,” writes Craig Fraser on his blog. “Main backlight was used with a bare head shooting through a diffuser which works beautifully as I can just tweak the head posistion to light the particular dishes without changing the whole rig. We also had a small softbox to fill the main shadow and create the subtle lighting mix which would enhance the colour and depth with in the food.”

You can read the rest of Frasershot’s blog post here.

They say you can judge a man by his shoes. If so, what shoes does James Bond wear? Well, as this video reveals, he wears Crocket & Jones shoes.

The video was shot by Northampton-based studio Frasershot, who were asked by Crocket & Jones to produce a classy image showing what Mr. Bond James Bond wears on his feet in the movie Skyfall.

“We shot it on the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III using Profoto lighting running from the D4 power pack,” writes Frasershot on their blog. “The main part of this image is captured using the Softbox 1×6′ RF in order to get the long running light down the surface of the shoe. We then used two more lights to give catchlights on both the heel and toe of the shoes.”

Read the rest of the story at Frasershot’s blog.