A German network-equipment company needed photographs of an access point for its website and brochures. Hardware: casing, board, connectors. On a technical product, the image has to show the build, the materials and the connections clearly.
They came to the studio in person, two people from the company, with the brief already done: a reference list with the exact angles they wanted.
The exploded view, made from photographs
The reference showed an exploded view of the device, the way smartphone ads do it. Those images usually start from a 3D render, and the company had no 3D file of this piece.
To reach that result without 3D, we photographed the parts separately and combined them into a final composition. Each one is shot with the perspective and lighting worked out so they fit together, and the assembly is built afterwards.
What changes compared with a render is what you see: the geometry, the colour and the materials are those of the real product.
It’s also the route that lets a manufacturer without a 3D archive have that kind of image on their website and in their brochures.
A brief of exact angles is treated as a specification
The rest of the job was a list of shots with specific angles, and there the work isn’t to interpret, it’s to comply.
The framings were reviewed with the client and adjusted until they matched the references as closely as needed. A hardware catalogue is read by comparison, and one piece turned a few degrees too far breaks the comparison.
It’s also why a reference list is the best brief a technical client can bring. It leaves no room for interpretation in the one place where interpretation doesn’t help.
The finish of the metal is a decision, not an inheritance
The textured metal of the device was smoothed at the client’s request.
That’s a brand decision, not a photographic one: the same part can be told as an industrial object, with all its grain, or as a finished product, cleaner. Both readings are legitimate and they look different on the page, which is why it’s agreed at the start and applied the same way across the series.
The files were delivered cut out as well
Alongside the final images, the series was delivered as PNGs with transparent backgrounds.
For a company producing brochures, presentations and product pages, that’s what turns a photograph into reusable material: the marketing team drops the part onto whatever background they need without coming back to the studio.
What’s left
The company got the product series, the context shots and the exploded view built from real photographs, plus the cut-outs for assembling their own materials.
“The retouched board looks very professional.” On the final adjustments: “perfect.”
Plasma Cloud, by email
And something less visible remains: a repeatable method. When the next manufacturer arrives with a render as a reference, the answer is no longer “that can’t be photographed”.
Got a reference that looks impossible?
Show it to us before you drop it. Often it isn’t about imitating the technique, but reaching the same result another way.
