Peter Belanger | Blog | cover creation

Notes from the Studio

After working on the latest cover for MacWorld Magazine I wanted to show what is involved in making a cover. I focused on the three main areas: the photography, photoshop and design. I chose a time lapse format to convey lots of information in a small amount of time. The only drawback of time lapse is that since half a day goes by in 30 seconds, the whole process seam so easy! Lots of details were left out of the design process (like the cover meetings and rounds of layout options). I began to photograph the design process after the layouts had already been narrowed down to just three cover designs.

On the technical side, for the time lapse video, I used the Canon 5D Mark II with a 24mm-70mm zoom. I chose the 5D because of its great image quality with high ISO’s. Canon’s sRAW1 gave me the flexibility of a RAW file with the file size of a jpeg. The actual Macworld cover was taken with a Phase One P65+ digital back attached to a 4×5 Sinar X camera with a 65mm lens.

Many thanks to Rob Schultz for allowing me to invade his office and literally shoot over his shoulder.

The music was used with permission by The Brokenmusicbox. You can see more of their music at http://www.myspace.com/tbmb

After working on the latest cover for Macworld Magazine I wanted to show what is involved in making a cover. I focused on the three main areas: the photography, photoshop and design. I chose a time lapse format to convey lots of information in a small amount of time. The only drawback of time lapse is that since half a day goes by in 30 seconds, the whole process seam so easy! Lots of details were left out of the design process (like the cover meetings and rounds of layout options). I began to photograph the design process after the layouts had already been narrowed down to just three cover designs.

Many thanks to Rob Schultz for allowing me to invade his office and literally shoot over his shoulder.

The music was used with permission by The Brokenmusicbox. You can see more of their music at http://www.myspace.com/tbmb

Comments

Tom Gooden

It’s really inspirational to see the whole process. Watching you work in PSD made me realize your job is only 50% complete after you press the shutter button.

Great work!
Alex Lupart

What font did you use for the intro and outro for your video?
Michael Critz

I love the whole concept of shooting the process time lapse. It’s the first time I think I’ve ever seen Photoshop time lapse process shot from a camera rather than a screen capture utility.
Kenn Marks

I think this was a great idea to show what you have to go through to create what to the reading public looks like such a simple task. I do wish Mac people would not let their content be corrupted by such inferior publishing mechanisms such as flash Apple provides the ability to publish in H.264 why not use it. The quality, compression, delivery is superior to any other format.
Peter Belanger

Alex, the font was Gotham.

Kenn, I understand your point about Flash. Most photographers build their whole photo website with Flash. The designer that built my website worked really hard building it Flash free. When It came time to add video— not part of the original design—I had to find a company to host the video. All the video hosting companies that I looked at used Flash as the player. I picked Vimeo because they use H.264 which is a great codec. The only problem is that the player is in Flash. I’m still working things out; hopefully my next option will use a QuickTime player. If I had hosted the video on my own server with QuickTime, you probably would not have seen the video: the video got thousands of hits a day and that would have taken down my server. So for now I need to use a company that specializes in hosting video to make sure that the video is playable no matter how many people are watching it. Thanks for checking out the video.
Oskar

Thats awesome, the whole process is inspiring me. Nice!
lino wiehen

this is amazing, you really are a rockstar. (except that you hate flash…) Thanks for having a myspace link on your site too, sweet. I am glad they picked blue as it was my fave of the colors shown. So this is what you do all day, very nice.
-lino
Ed Taylor

Great video Peter! Thanks for your time and effort in creating and sharing this!
May I ask who makes the two diffusor panels that you used on this? I’ve been looking for something like that to replace the bulky frame kits I use now.
Best Regards,
Ed Taylor
Xiul

Really gret job!!

Congratulations.
omg

Wait… then… iphones don’t glow by themselves??? :(
grammarnazi

“the whole process seam so easy!” → seems
“its great image quality with high ISO’s.” → ISOs
Alex

Thanks for showing this
Phillip Kerman

Awesome and inspiring video. It may be required viewing for any inspiring yet impatient new learners of media creation. I sensed the varying time-lapse rate was intentional as appropriate to the content (or did you have it the same rate throughout?).

One part about the narrative… I had to wonder why the guy didn’t just email the file. It was better watching the transition though.

Finally, let me suggest you let go of your aversion to Flash. No problem avoiding it but there’s no need to make heroic efforts to avoid something that has established itself as a perfectly viable tool—especially for video. Not trying to derail the discussion… your video is great.
Daniel Jalkut

Beautiful work on the cover, and in the making of the video. I was particularly impressed by the “floating out the window” effect exiting the photo studio. Neat.
Irfan

Excellent insight into your process – very inspiring and I’m sure eye opening for those who don’t work in the industry… thanks for sharing.
Sebastiaan de With

That’s great! Wonderful timelapse, thanks for sharing this.

I suppose the (matted) image of the two iPhones isn’t and won’t be available for download (paid or free)?
justin

Hi Peter,

If you’re interested in a bit more about video formats and making sure Flash is available too but prefer quicktime + various other native formats, checkout this free solution:

http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody

it can be implemented fairly easy, it’s just a few lines of code really.
Geno

What did you use to trigger the 5d? Nice work, by the way.
Aenar

Fun video-should have stuck to paper white background IMO.
DavidChat

Wow so that’s how you get iPhones to look so “shiny.” Didn’t realize the lighting was so complex. Thanks for showing the process. I wish the photo was able to stand out more on the magazine cover though. Macworld piles on so much heavy type and bright colors on cover.

Great video.
Philip Broadway

Thank you for sharing this! I think you should follow this up with a time-lapse of the mock-up & revisions process. Probably will need a different soundtrack, but I’m sure you can make that part look just as fun!
Peter Belanger

Geno, I used Canon Utilities to trigger the 5DMII for the studio scene. The rest was done manually.
Paul Robinson

Awesome video. It’s always impressive and humbling to see just how much work goes into a “simple”, beautiful thing.
Mau

Great video Peter! I really enjoy seeing the behind the scenes work. Can you comment on the amount of time spent on shooting in relation to post production work? Is post production longer these days and for projects like this?
I’m also wondering if you ended up shooting a variety of colored backgrounds for the Macworld or if it that was a decision made by them later in the process.

Thanks for sharing.
Eric Kotara

Really informative post Peter. I really enjoyed getting to see how the shot progressed with each reflector added; very educational. Thanks for posting this and great work.

Eric
Phat Photographer

Peter – as a follow on to Mau, can you comment on how much time went into the prep to figure out what you wanted to shoot and how you were going to execute on it?

Beautiful photo, though it tough to say what was more work, shooting the iPhone or putting together this video for all of us to enjoy.

Thanks.
Peter Belanger

Mau,
Post production on this project was about 30%. This was a little more than typical time in post production because this was a cover photo. For instance, I spent time making the background flexible so it could assume all the color variations the designer needed to present as cover options. I photographed the background on white and final background colors were added in post.
Art

phew! I grew tired watching the photographer futz around with the lighting and initial shots. I figured this was the process as I’ve taken personal family pics with professional photographers before, but it’s still amazing to actually see it.
Simon Van Neste

What an inspiring video! What application is used to pull the photos from the camera and sort through them? Is that Bridge CS4?
Tom Catchesides

Amazing work – thanks for the insight.
Simon Keitch

Great promo video; this is really well executed, definitely an inspiration!
Brian

Ha, after watching the film I see that everyone has problems with those little bits of junk that invade your product and have to be edited out no matter how new they are, how many times you clean them, or gloves used to keep them clean… I used to think it was just me!?!

Excellent work and studio. Thanks the fly on the wall view of your your shoot!
Rob Greer

Your time-lapse video makes me want to do something similar to make it easier to explain to clients why it takes so much time to photograph even the most simple products.

In terms of your setup, it looked like you were pushing most of your light through through a 4×4 floppy and adding accent lighting by shooting through small pieces of white plexi that were also used to control reflections. Is that an accurate guess?
Shaun

Nice.

How did you do the part where you’re walking into the building, getting into the elevator, walking down the hall, etc. Did you use a tripod? There’s hardly any camera shake. Good job! I liked it!
Peter Belanger

Simon Van Neste, we used Canon Utilities for this particular project.

Shaun, the building, elevator and hall scenes were all handheld at a higher ISO.
Jim M

Peter, saw your video on Strobist, thank you so much for taking your time to make it.
Jason Heller

Outstanding shoot Peter! The time lapse video was awesome. Kudos!
nicole

Hi Peter,
That was a lot of fun to watch professionals in action; wow you guys sure work fast! Just kidding, but what is that white clamshell you are using that you could add side panels too? It looks like a great piece of equipment for product photography.
Great job and very entertaining!
Mark Klemick

Peter – Thanks very much for this informative glimpse into your intense work process. Two questions came to mind… 1) You create many different lighting setups, are they mostly a sequence of preplanned arrangements or do you make a lot of improvisational adaptations? 2) About how many images of the product were taken to yield the ‘one’ selected for cover use? Thanks again !
JP Sevillano

Dear Peter: This video was super duper awesome !
It’s totally inspiring to see a pro working at his craft.
Thanks for sharing, yeah, went by fast very was very informative.

Wishing all the best and great success.

-JP
denis morisset

One word: AWESOME!
More!!!!!!!!!
Chris Newman

Thanks for putting so much effort into the movie, that must have added a significant effort to the job but I got a lot out of it. Both the stills and the movie are world class.
Gleb Budman

Thanks Peter for the great video – our entire office loved it.

(Someone also noticed that 2 minutes in, the “Bring Back Steve Jobs” poster we created is hanging on the wall ;-) I mentioned and linked your video on our blog: http://bit.ly/3LxFQ

Gleb Budman
CEO, Backblaze
marco de scalzi

Hi Peter, Great work. I have two little question
Why with p65+ you shoot whit sinar and not whit mamiya camera. why?
and the the focus and your deph of field is perfect, in small product is hard,
how you make this. whith aperture, tilt or shift, or????
thanks. Marco
Alex

Marco – Sinar/Rollei/Leaf (Hy6/AFi) x-sync to 1/1000s and have the highest grade optics readily available (Schneider et al).

I don’t know if thats the reason, but it’d be reason enough for me.
Stefan Tell

Thanks for taking your time doing this. Apart from the studio work I especially liked seeing the process of making the cover. I would love to see a blog post with a setup from the studio and how the different lights and modifiers worked on the final image, if you have some spare time :)
Jorge

I just happened to see your work and loved it. Amazing structure and everything. Congrats, man!
Erich

No wonder the iphone that I bought doesn’t look as nice as the one on the cover ;) I thought it was just cover girls who got air brushed!

e
Anthony

I know a couple of people have asked about this. Does anybody know who makes the two diffusor panels that where used on this? I believe that Peter is the one adjusting the smaller screen at 0:13 and 0:14.
Johan

Really cool video!
Now I want to see a video of how you made the video!
Arnel Garcia

Hi Peter. Thank you for sharing this. It is amazing,very informative and fun to watch.
Mr. Puggle

Brilliant!
Fanny Natasya

wow… your work is brilliant….it really inspired me after i watched the video.
and i realized that photography is not so simple with just click the shutter, but a lot more deeper than that… thanks for sharing!
Chris Biele

Wonderful time lapse! You are a master of the pen tool. The clipping path was selected with such grace. Thanks for sharing.
Candy Howard

Amazing!
Andy

Superb video!
Bill Graefe

Peter, could you explain why you spent so much time on the lighting in the shoot? Why didn’t you add virtual lighting via software? Thanks in advance for your answer.

Oh, LOVED your transition using the clear blue sky.
Peter Belanger

Bill Graefe, thanks for the comment. We try to do everything in camera and rely on post production to clean up imperfections. This particular shot is actually one of our simplified lighting arrangements. The iPhones are very difficult products to photograph with all four metal curved sides and a reflective top. Product photography takes a long time in analyzing and determining the behavior of light. It’s not necessarily easier or faster to light a product via software because software rendering is an imitation of real light.
Mathew

Incredible video! I’ve been a fan of your photography for a long time and it’s very inspiring to watch you work.

What type/brand diffusion panels were you using? Are they collapsable? Are the smaller pieces plexiglass?
Eugenia Kim

Peter, I found your video through CreativePro.com’s regular email newsletter, and have tweeted and blogged in RedRoom (http://bit.ly/2mKRQ) about it. It is truly brilliant. Perhaps because I remember being the art director hanging out in the studio for hours while a peanut was being shot, then taking that image back to incorporate it into the design project, the time lapse truly resonated. I’ve shared it because folks should understand and appreciate what it takes to create a “simple” cover image. Thank you.
Alex Rodriguez

Thanks for sharing, I really enjoyed watching this video!
ERICK S.

Excellent work, thanks 4 sharing it
AC

Wow, that is impressive. I designed my book cover first from scratch, scanned it in Photo Shop then the rest is history.

What an impressive process. That was cool. Thanks so much.
Shane Stiles

Excellent work!!! I have enjoyed watching this video over and over again just to try to pick out every nuance of knowledge that I could from your awesome work. I am hoping to do a time lapse shoot as you did for some marketing. The execution of the shoot was very well thought out and the final image just goes to show that. Thank you for sharing this.
aphexafx

Peter, I’m a commercial photography student, so there is no need for me to elaborate on how much I’ve enjoyed your video here. Yeah, I’ve watched it a billion times. I love your studio. And your camera support. Hell, even your huge collection of C-stands is inspiring.

But I have a question that I REALLY hope you’ll answer: Where did you get that nice lightweight rounded corner diffuser panel??? Is it a common brand? I must know. I want.

Great work, as always!
Rory

Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk’s Rhythm-A-Ning goes great with this!
Stewart

Simplest of concepts beautifully executed – Nice work!
Cheesecib

Молодец, нижеподписавшийся. Много что узнал нового. Спасибо большое.
James Wages

I certainly feel compelled to chime in with others and offer you my thanks for this excellent video. And in light of the enormous effort that went into the photo shoot, it is a shame that the folks behind Macworld magazine so callously mar their cover art with an enormous white rectangle for inkjetting mailing info. The final cover design on the subscriber edition of the Macworld Sept. 2009 issue is simply shocking.
Carmen H

Awesome work. It’s very inspirational, and a great insights to the whole process of photoshop. I wish my clients could see the work really put in to get everything picture perfect.
Jyoti Thakur

Hi Peter,

Let me tell you, your video was an eye opening for me, I never knew there is so much efforts behind a single click, this video is fantastic….U R superb in your professional.
video

Thanks for for your blog. I like the blog. It is very interesting.
Tim Driver

Peter – really interesting video – thanks for taking the time to share it with us

Tim
Jonathan

Thanks ,Beautiful work on the cover I’m as excited Thanks the fly on the wall view of your your shoot!
thanks
Alex Photographer

Always interesting to see behind the scenes footage – people are unaware of how much work goes into photography these days.
Alfred Rowe

Its Really nice to see people go through this process just to put nice things in our hands. Awesome group of workers, really made my day
scotty soltronic

wow!! that was effin awesome, so cool to see the whole process from start to finish. nicely done
Photo Studio Equipment

amazing video Peter, thanks for the post. It’s very inspirational, and a great insights to the whole process. good one………