Staging and shooting bedroom furniture
MikeAldrich
Registered Users Posts: 145 Major grins
Hey guys! So I got this awesome new promotion at work and I'm going to take over doing all our furniture (mostly bedroom, office and some occasional pieces) photography. I'm the warehouse manager of a tropical style furniture company here in Florida and since I do have a background in photography, we've decided to let me have a go of it. The cost of shipping all our product out to have it done professionally was expensive, but most importantly, we just weren't happy with the company that was doing all of our furniture. I'm a little rusty at this stuff so I have a few questions to get me started.
I currently have a 2 light soft box set up and can use my sb 600 as a remote light if need be. I can also purchase a third light if needed. We want to be able to do most of the shooting here in our warehouse. We have limited room but I think we can manage, plus I already have permission to take down a wall or two. We basically have one long room I can use and could potentially have two different set ups on each end, or maybe just use one side and change up the set. The other room would be our lobby area. The problem is these rooms is that there are no windows. So, how do the pro’s build these sets with fantastic beachy scenes taking place outside the window? We also have access to one of our customer’s stores that already have our stuff staged with windows, but ideally, we would like to do all the photography here so we can work whenever we want. Plus, the windows look out on the main road and not a beautiful tropical scene.
I’m also curious as to whether there are digital backgrounds available where I could just shoot the pieces on white and drop into a sweet room setting backdrop. I’m going need to come up with something to do with the floors, we have grey tiled floor, not the type you would expect to find in a bedroom. I’ve started looking into rolled up flooring but I’m not sure of what all my options would be.
Any help, suggestions or links to any of the above would be greatly appreciated. I want to come up with a game plan and equipment/supply list to see what kind of budget I’m going to need. Thanks in advance!
I currently have a 2 light soft box set up and can use my sb 600 as a remote light if need be. I can also purchase a third light if needed. We want to be able to do most of the shooting here in our warehouse. We have limited room but I think we can manage, plus I already have permission to take down a wall or two. We basically have one long room I can use and could potentially have two different set ups on each end, or maybe just use one side and change up the set. The other room would be our lobby area. The problem is these rooms is that there are no windows. So, how do the pro’s build these sets with fantastic beachy scenes taking place outside the window? We also have access to one of our customer’s stores that already have our stuff staged with windows, but ideally, we would like to do all the photography here so we can work whenever we want. Plus, the windows look out on the main road and not a beautiful tropical scene.
I’m also curious as to whether there are digital backgrounds available where I could just shoot the pieces on white and drop into a sweet room setting backdrop. I’m going need to come up with something to do with the floors, we have grey tiled floor, not the type you would expect to find in a bedroom. I’ve started looking into rolled up flooring but I’m not sure of what all my options would be.
Any help, suggestions or links to any of the above would be greatly appreciated. I want to come up with a game plan and equipment/supply list to see what kind of budget I’m going to need. Thanks in advance!
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Comments
Not sure what kinds of furniture you are talking about but you could potentially build a two wall set to stage everything in. That'd be an easy setup/tear down.
We have a warehouse, but I wont be shooting in the warehouse. There is too much going on in the warehouse to set up for shoots. We have a couple rooms in the offices that I can use for setting up and shooting. So, I basically already have a couple two wall set's to shoot on. The problem is there are no windows in the rooms and I was trying to figure out what the pros do to stage window scenes.
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Product photography is one of the more difficult types of photography, with food photography even more difficult and time consuming.
It sounds like your products should be stable enough to withstand lengthy setup times, so I recommend taking your time to form the light and shadows. Take plenty of intermediate shots so that you can see the shot as it evolves. Studio strobes (monolights or pack lights) with modelling lights allow you to see shadows and basic light angles as you build the shot. Many lights is definitely better than too few lights. (I used 4 - Bowens monolights, plus numerous speedlites/speedlights, as needed.)
Digital backgrounds are easy enough to come by, but background removal can be tricky, especially with wicker and other products that show the background behind and through the product. A well-lit white or unlit black back drop, behind the subject, makes a big difference in easier background removal.
"... how do the pro’s build these sets with fantastic beachy scenes taking place outside the window?" Yes, digital backgrounds can be used for this sort of shot.
Since you mention "office" furniture, you may have chrome and other reflective surfaces to deal with. Reflections will show the camera and yourself in the reflections if you're not careful. You may also have glass and translucent components. Lighting and background can get really tricky, really quickly. Again, take your time and allow time to learn and to grow photographically.
Look at competitor and similar product shots to gain insight in how they were lit and shot (angles, distances, etc.). Learn from their strengths and weaknesses.
Plan on buying and/or building a number of light "flags", reflectors and scrims. These are important in building the light as you need it, and in forming highlights and shadows which help build depth and dimension into the shot.
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Right now, I'm trying to weigh the benefits and restrictions between building the sets verses shooting the pieces individually and inserting them into digital backgrounds. You mentioned digital backgrounds are easy to come by but I haven't had much luck finding anything suitable. Perhaps you may be able to point me in the right direction. The reason I'm leaning this way is because all the photography we've had done to this point is all shot in these large staged rooms and we just don't have the space available to come anything close to that. Plus, there is a fair amount on digitally inserting furniture pieces into these scenes anyway. I would post some sample pieces but I can't for the life of me remember how to post images from a source that isn't smugmug (my smugmug site is currently down).
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You can purchase a "beach scene" (with a commercial license) from any of a number of sources. While the resolution should loosely match your final presentation resolution, it doesn't generally have to be the same as your capture resolution for your camera. Then just add blur for the digital background to the degree required for the effect you desire and add it to show through the set pieces (after digital background removal from the set image).
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