As a means of showing a whole range of features and technical details of a new piece of laboratory equipment, discussions were made about the possibility of showing an exploded view of the product. The idea was to show the quality and design that goes into the individual components that make up the product but at the same time we could easily control how much 'secret' detail was revealed by careful positioning and overlapping of other components.
Typically, this sort of image is usually produced as a CAD illustration but it was decided that photographing for real would be more plausible. Several ways of producing the final image were discussed and the final photograph is a composite of several separate images however all of the major components were photographed as one shot. There was lots of string, fishing wire, a glue gun and pieces of tape, the challenge being waiting for items to stop gently swaying in the air currents caused by us walking around the studio.
Once the basic structure of the final image was photographed, we then started thinking in 3D to work out how certain elements would look if they were 'floated' away from the carcass and what would be revealed beneath. To keep perspective, all of the component elements were photographed from the same camera position and again various methods of hanging and holding were employed. Keeping the same camera position also meant that the lighting was consistent throughout and as a decision was made early on to use a black background, the post production work would be kept relatively simple.
Although the final image has over 20 elements that seem to be free floating, the photoshop file only required about 10 layers as many of the main elements were all contained in the base exposure. The final image was first used at an exhibition trade show as part of a product launch and it is continuing to be used in promotional material.
