Picture as Product or as Placement | Lilly Mandarano | Episode 565

Lilly Mandarano | Episode 565

Lilly Mandarano is the designer-maker behind The Super Sparrow ceramics. Lilly hand builds ceramic tableware in her studio in Deptford, SE London. Lilly studied Fine Art and then moved into ceramics by change following that. The pieces are designed to reflect a natural, minimal, and relaxed aesthetic.

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In terms of camera equipment, will you use something as simple as a smartphone?

Yes, for some of them definitely. So if I am looking at say the milk jug on the web site and the espresso cups, the tea light holders and the little planters, those are all iPhone shots. The rest of them are with a Canon, so with a DSLR camera. So it a is a little bit of a mix of the two.

When do you decide to step it up from the technology of a smartphone, which can be really great technology, when do you decide when you need to step up the quality from smartphone to camera equipment?

For the website I wanted to have kind of uniform look for the images and again it comes down to having all the stock available, so each color and size, say for the cheese boards they take a lot of space in the kiln and they take a long time to make, and so it is hard for me to have that stuff available. I used to have in my old studio a nice little corner that was easy to take shots in. So I would take them routinely as I went. And then as some stuff came out of stock I made a point then of pulling out the camera a bit later on in the process and went through a did proper photographs of as many things as I could with the idea that I would go back and photograph the espresso cups and milk jugs but I never got around to making more. So it is having enough, say one of each color, for me to be able to photograph each of them.

Do you have a preference for natural light or artificial light?

I like natural light better, but the studio I’ve got now doesn’t seem to have a corner conducive to that. I filled it within an inch of its life with shelving and useful things. I used to have this lovely little corner that the light just fell right in there so it was easy and quick as I pulled something out and I really liked it I could photograph it really quickly. I don’t have that place now so I find that I sit with the idea of photography but I don’t want to pull everything out. I’m lazy basically in some ways, I don’t want to pull everything out and make it official I just want to catch them as they are there.

Can you tell us the difference between a product shot and a placement shot?

I think with a product shot it is more to give someone a clear picture of what the product is, what the color is like, what the surface is going to look like. I like to show some pictures where there is the bottom of things so every once in a while I will put a picture of what the bottom of the plate will look like with the logo.And also, I suppose, goodness of the lifestyle show is that is gives you context in terms of size and sort of how they will look in your life sort of thing. Where a product shot I think is color and texture, where it can clearly be seen on its own rather than mixed up on a table where some of it might be in focus, some of it might not and it is more about how it fits into your life.

You have recently hired a photographer. How do you communicate your vision for your work effectively to a photographer?

Some of it was, I wanted them to be natural, minimal, and relaxed. Because I think that is what is missing in some of the photographs that I have taken myself. I think the work itself is structural in a way that it’s kind of minimalist but also I think the work has personality when you see them, so I think that was missing from it, the kind of relaxed feel of the pieces. They are sort of soft looking. They are lighter than what people think they are, with soft edges. So that is what I kind of got across describing, and I put a mood board together. So I put a few pictures on a private Pintrest board of sort of scenes and lighting and colors that I was kind of looking for.

How did you know it was time to hire a photographer instead of you just knuckling down and doing it yourself?

Because it wouldn’t happen (laughter). I am always every day full to the brim so it is really hard for me to be disciplined and thinking this is the day I am going to do it, I am going to put it aside. Because there is always stuff to make, there is always emails to reply to, or invoices to do. So if I didn’t put it in the diary then it was going to slip by again.

Tell me why you choose not to do a lot of process shots?

I think it is a couple of things, actually. Some it goes back to time and I feel like my time is stretch all the time. And it is not that I don’t think about, I have bought two cameras specifically for this purpose, which clamp onto the desk, can be angled. I don’t take them out. I don’t set them up. I just get on. I get in there, I get on, I sort of lose focus, I am listening to podcasts all the time. I don’t want to sit there talking. I don’t like the sound of my own voice. Part of it is because I am for the most part, self taught. Maybe the way I do things is maybe not the way I should be telling everyone else. Anyway, I just need to see it like this is the way that I am doing it. This is what I am doing and there isn’t a right and a wrong, I suppose. They come out all right.