*notcot in design , 15:16

Sears’ Craftsman Photography- 05.07.08

tools1.jpgYes, the near $9,000 Sears Craftsman tool set with 1470 pieces is in heavy circulation around the tech sites today (i first saw it over at Dvice) - but what truly amazed me is the catalog photography… someone clearly took a LOT of time perfectly laying out these thousands of tools… for not just the 1470 piece set, but also the 300, 198, 189, 204, 106, 130, and so forth piece sets… and they are awesome pictures! Check out a few more of my favorites on the next page…


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View all of the great photography for the Sears CraftsmanTool Sets here!

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14 Notes

I also find it funny that there is a Vimax ad. on this Sears Tool Book page… If your 1500 Piece Tool set doesn’t impress her… at least there is one that will….. hehehe… come on, it’s funny…

----- Jason 18.12.08 20:23

Hahah!!! That’s awesome. An old friend from GSP told me about this posting. Good stuff. I was the photo assistant on that years Tool Book working under Ed Laube, Tom Eipert, Rebecca Wilson…those three mostly shot these pretty little numbers. And yes, I polished, and counted every shiny piece. Little white gloves all day, crappy A/C. We actually shot these MTS Shots on Formica like material that was a shiny silver color and scratched pretty easy… Ed cracked one in half once it was pretty loud. When we first got those sheets of silver they were coated in plastic, it took me hours to peel off until some smartass came along and showed me a trick with a cardboard tube… Needless to say those shots are NOT Photoshopped, comped in any way. All set up by hand, sometimes I lended hands setting up spirals, stacks, leans, lies, curls, and stands. Other little bits of magic were applied. Tom and I spent 3 days putting together, counting, polishing and setting up that 1500 piece set. I helped clean and count and do what I could on many shots with Tom and countless with Ed the master, and a great teacher for me. Learned a lot of cool tricks, had a great time working on those shoots and projects. I’m still proud I cleaned the hell out of that place and got Ed some shelves built and I never broke a camera or a lens or one of those sacred digi-backs…. Thanks for all the fun Ed Laube, I miss holding all those heavy tools, my hand modelling career was shortlived… Tom, thanks for never throwing a tool at me after one of us jiggled the table…. :)

----- Jason P. Dunne 18.12.08 20:19

yeah my dad took those photos. He’s awesome.

----- Mary Laube 24.06.08 08:30

Wow, those are some fantastic shots! Can I use the term “tool porn” here? Hi-res versions of those would sure make for some great desktop pics too!

----- The Slapster 09.05.08 17:52

I used to work for Business Arts in the same building/same floor where John worked for GSP. I still knonw a few GSP folks. We shot Sears tools all the time… on glass…and yes, the glass would explode once in a while. Those “socket shots” were fun, but the hours were really not worth what we got for the shot. The examples above really show movement and that is what sets them apart from our stuff. Getting LIFE into hand tools is not easy. Very Nice Work!

Dave Stevens

----- Dave Stevens 09.05.08 11:56

I wonder if after they get it all set up they sit back and say …no I don’t like that, lets try something else.

----- Gill 09.05.08 11:46

I know the photographer who did these shots. His name is Ed Laube and he works at GSP Marketing in Chicago. I ran the studio at GSP for 10 years but before that I was tortured as a photographer buy Sears and the tool book enough times to tell you for certain this is all one photo. Worked and and reworked, these shots can take many days to assemble and then light. Several weeks can pass before approval. We used to shoot them on giant pieces of tempered glass so each and every socket face could capture a white reflection while appearing to be on a colored background. I recall after many hours of heating under the tungsten lights we used, a sheet of glass about 8X10 feet exploded from cooling too quickly. Very Scary!
BTW, Ed is a very patient man.
JFW

----- John F. Walté 08.05.08 21:37

Trust me, I know the guy that took these pictures and this is all real.

----- rox09 08.05.08 20:28

I think I can help everyone out here, my name is Ed Laube and I work for GSP Marketing in Chicago, We are the ones that design and photograph the Sears Craftsman books, I head a team of three photographers that do the holiday and big tool book, and no photoshop is used to compose any of our shots, each is a one shot, composed on set, the 1400+ set took most of three days to set up and shoot. I have to thank Sears Craftsman for allowing us to show their tools in a way that we think is unique, and yes I do have a great job!

----- Ed Laube 08.05.08 19:27

Having taken multiple commercial photo classes, I’m pretty sure this is all real.

----- esotericsean 08.05.08 13:47

I think compositionally it probably was NOT done in photoshop because of the slightly different angles of each tool, and slightly different angle at which the light hits each one.

And honestly, I think although it would take a lot of time to actually set up each photo, it would probably be a blast to do. Sears can hire me any day to assemble their stuff for photo shoots.

----- Kristi 08.05.08 13:22

I have to agree about it being PS, although it’s still a great composition either way.

----- Kristin 08.05.08 10:45

I beg to differ - it might just be me… but it seems like it would be a LOT easier to just lay it all out rather than photoshop it together well… or maybe i just haven’t watched enough ‘you suck at photoshop’ to learn the shortcut to convincing collaging…

----- jean/NOTCOT 08.05.08 00:02

Surely these photos were pieced together in segments…it would be foolish not to given the white backdrop. not only that, but a lot of the sets are identical tools only smaller, making it easy to simply scale and cascade in photoshop. Impressive either way, I suppose.

----- Andy DV 07.05.08 23:33


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