In my time I’ve made my share of photo mistakes, and they’ve usually been the result of bad lighting decisions. So I couldn’t help but notice this manufacturer’s attempt to illustrate the product in a natural setting, the usual goal of product publicity. Unless the product features camouflage and the setting is the deep woods.

Photographers like to complain about the difficulty of certain setups as “being like” taking a picure of a lump of coal in a mineshaft. Or a snowball in a blizzard. Or, more common, of that newly polished piece of billet. In this case the result isn’t fatal, but for one obvious reason it falls short of being an eyestopper.

The lack of separation of product from background directs the eye to the model, not the product. Next time try some portable location lighting or prepare to spend a few hours in Photoshop to knock the background down a bit and open up the product.