Valley of Tea sources fresh, pure, and rare teas from artisan farms worldwide. They also offer a selection of high-quality culinary ingredients, ensuring a delightful experience for both tea connoisseurs and fine food enthusiasts.
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Capturing the essence of Valley of Tea’s fine teas, herbs, spices, fruits, and nuts: delivering high-detail macro photography for their extensive product range.
Valley of Tea, a worldwide seller of imported teas, herbs, spices, fruits, and nuts, needed professional product photography for their large online catalogue of over 800 unique items. Given the many small and detailed products, macro photography was necessary. To handle the shallow depth of field in macro shots, I used a technique called focus stacking. This method provided Valley of Tea with high-resolution visuals, future-proofing their catalogue for evolving e-commerce standards and the increasing demand for detailed hover-zoom features on retail platforms.
In addition to the individual product photography, the project scope was extended to include Valley of Tea's teaware and gift boxes. This ensured a cohesive visual identity across their entire product range.
Each top-down image comprised a photo stack of up to nine images for optimal depth of field.
Mastering Macro Detail at Scale: Navigating Depth of Field and High-Volume Photography with Focus Stacking and a Streamlined Workflow.
The primary challenge with photographing small subjects like individual tea leaves or fine herbs at high magnification is the shallow depth of field. Achieving complete sharpness from the front to the back of such delicate items in a single exposure is often impossible. With Valley of Tea's vast range of products each needing top and side views, this technical hurdle was substantial. To address this, I implemented focus stacking, a process where multiple shots, each with a different focal point, are captured and then digitally combined to create a single, perfectly sharp image. For each product, this typically involved taking up to nine images per view, demanding precision and consistency.
Beyond the technical image capture, the set-up for each product was a careful, hands-on process. Each sample, whether a small circle of tea or a delicate herb, was hand-poured and arranged to ensure it looked its best before the series of shots commenced. Developing a scalable technique to perform this work, from capture through to editing, within the client's time constraints was crucial. Colour calibration was applied from start to finish. Furthermore, I streamlined the delivery by setting up an automated synchronisation from my server to theirs, ensuring they had immediate access to categorised, ready-to-use images, a significant efficiency gain for their team.
