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A friend of mine produces custom stationery, mainly invitations and related collateral. She has asked me to help her produce some images for her website and possibly other media. The equipment I have available is in my sig, although I believe she has a light tent she purchased to shoot jewelery she manufactures as well.

Her work is a mix of modern laser printed works along with, just moving into, some old school letter press work including embossing.

Any hints about how to approach this would be much appreciated.

Can you post a few snaps of her work. I can't easily imagine what these stationary things are. They sound pretty 2 dimentional which will pose a challenge.

I will check with her over the weekend. She has already had some designs stolen and is quite cautious now.

A couple of random ideas come to mind, depending on what you're after.

For some products she might want a 'mug shot' for lack of a better term, that is a photo that is simply the paper, envelope or whatever shot straight on, with it parallel to the sensor. This is like a glorified scan I guess, but would be useful if she needs catalog shots etc as opposed to promotional stuff. For that I'd side light it to remove reflections. One light either side if you want it nice and even, or to bring out embossing perhaps only from one side, or at least with on side brighter.

The more challenging shot is making some nice advertising type shots to have around on the site. The main challenge here to be honest isn't shooting it, it's the art design side of things. I did this once for my dad to try and get some shots of a product he produces that is a CD and some booklets. Making them look interesting and professional was beyond us, so we went with some of the above shots mostly. Sadly I don't have many tips on this point - with any luck she is creative and can manage that side of things for you.

As far as shooting it once it's set up, light tent is good. These things can be reflective if she has any gloss paper and anyway, you don't want shadows. If the tent is too small, a white sheet and some thing to hang it over could be a good option too.

Lighting is then important, you want light from both sides of the tent and maybe above as well. I see you have one flash, for this I'd say you need more than one source. Do you have a tripod? If you do, that will help. I'd suggest continuous lighting with the tent, which won't be very bright so you'll have to go a longer shutter but hey, paper doesn't move right? You can use desktop lamps, spotlights, or whatever you want. Just use consistent bulbs so WB is the same, set it to that source before you shoot and be sure the ambient is low so that it doesn't affect it. An easy way would be turning out the lights in the room and working by the light of the lamps lighting the subject.

Good luck!

This is a very interesting challenge; thanks for asking.

And it's perhaps almost worthy of being a challenge evnt here, in and of itself, such is the degree of difficulty here.

A number of thoughts come to mind ... yes, I'm living dangerously.

first of all, there's her graphic designs ... just the raw designs. These may be best displayed, on the web or in a brochure, directly, with some form of IP protection of course.

For letterheads and the like, my first thought is to scan, rather than photograph, the documents. This will give you a baseline image of the documents that can be later photochopped into other composite images, but with none of the hassles of actually having to shoot them.

For actual photos of the paper examples, consider a copy stand. This is like an enlarger (who remembers those?) with a flat bed for your documents, a pair (or quad) of lights angled towards the document bed, and a mount for the camera, allowing the camera to face down with the focal plane parallel to the bed's surface.

For using the light tent, I would see myself creating some sort of a mock-up of something (flowers and/or lace for invitations, coffee cups or plates for menus, etc) to try to show her products within a particular, and perhaps somewhat relevant, context.

Finally, the embossed printing may present some extra challenges too, as there may be some unwanted reflections coming from the raised printing.

Have fun.

Perhaps you might get some pointers from this strobist article for shooting flat stuff.

I have a few flashes and some RF remotes if you feel the need for more light at some stage...

Flatbed scanning is a useful tool that many photographers forget about, but it might not bring out the embossed areas very well (try an experiment!). Also be aware that a light tent might suffer from the same problem (depending on how you set up the lights outside the tent: you'd want one side slightly brighter than the other). This implies that you might find a second flash useful.

You'll probably want more than just straight-on shots: try setting up a model "desk area" to show some of the items in context (e.g. with pens, desk lamp, etc).
Get a big sheet of smooth cardboard (coloured? - probably white)

Be careful surenj: there's a difference between stationery (noun) and stationary (adjective indicating lack of motion).
It is true that in most offices with stationery cupboards, the cupboard is stationary...

DaveB, thanks for the grammar tip.

I was thinking...perhaps one flash at 90 degrees to bring out the embossing?