This American Security BF1512 safe is another item from the several years I was the main product photographer for American Security Products company. They typically wanted several shots of each safe with the door open and closed. Open door shots were taken with the safe empty and then with props inside.
Many of the shots they would use most often were the ones where the door of the safe is partially closed and the safe had props inside. They liked to see the safe partially closed so that the company logo was visible on the outside, but that often caused a problem with properly lighting the props inside the safe. To solve this problem, I would typically take a shot of the safe with props and the door wide open so as to properly light the props, then a photo of the safe with the door partially closed, and then I would make a composite of the two in Photoshop.
Generally, I would, in Photoshop, cut the safe out of the background and put it on a layer with a transparent background, so that we could easily put the safe on different backgrounds as needed for advertising purposes. In this case, I put the safe on a plain gradient background and created the reflection and shadows underneath in Photoshop.
