I'm not going to give you ideas for inspiration, other than choose a theme and look for interesting props to support that. But having hired photographers and also made a lot of photo's myself (unlike other companies, we never buy stock nail photo's), I'll give you some technical tips.
First, choose a photographer who specializes in portraiture or fashion. Look at their work. Creative photographers are rare, many are simply competent.
Be very clear with your instructions to the photographer. Have a very clear idea about what you want to achieve and make sure they don't stray from that unless their idea is good. Sometimes they can go off at a tangent, take hundreds of shots and kind of hope they get something. Fewer more deliberate shots is better. Make some sketches of what you want and take these with you. Or find images you like on the internet and show these to the photographer.
How will you use the photo? If you want to make a photo for a magazine cover, then this has to be shot in portrait (not landscape). Remember to leave space at the top for the magazine title, and space either left or right in the midsection for text (what's in the mag that month). With modern high resolution cameras its better to shoot further back and do the cropping in Photoshop - I've taken and seen far too many great photo's ruined because the photographer got excited and cropped with the lens.
Here's an example that I took for the Xmas cover of the Swedish nails magazine:
If the nails include nail art or really good French and that's a main feature:
- you have to shoot close enough to see the detail. That's very difficult to do and get a face shot - hence most the poses you see of this are repeated often. Sometimes it's better to simply use a prop and forget the face.
- Make sure the nail shape is good. Far too much nail art out there put on a poor nail shape.
- The complete photo must have the nails as the focal point - don't make the image too cluttered.
- Finally, a very important point - make sure the nail is flat to the camera. A side-on shot make show nail shape but you will loose the nail art.
If the nails are simply manicured and painted (or gel polished), then you can take photo's further away and do quarter-length shots (face and chest). If you use a stronger single light and white background, and shoot lower (looking up), you can get a fashion look. (Think many of CND's advertising photo's).
You can get composition ideas (how to place hands) from many of the Scratch covers.
Here's a perfect example of how to photograph nail art (I wish that I had taken this photo!). Simple background, interesting prop, great lighting and WOW nails!
As you can see this won the STARS 2012 photo competition in February, judged by Jan Arnold of CND (we met Jan again in Germany a few weeks ago and thanked her for the decision. As always she was beautifully charming). The nail shape is called Dream and created by Viktoria Evtushenko.
Good luck with the photo shoot and have fun!
Bob
