furniture photography questions

[MikeAldrich]

Hello everyone, my name is Mike and I am new to the site. I have a project that I could use some advice on. I currently work for a tropical style bedroom furniture company as the warehouse manager. We have been sending out our product to have professionally photographed but we are unhappy with the results, process and costs.

I do have a photography background and I love product photography so I jumped at the opportunity to try and shoot our stuff myself in house. Most of my photo experience is sports and landscapes but I excelled at commercial photography in school, though that was some time ago.

Here’s my dilemma. All of our product shots to date are on these really nice built room settings. They were built in a big warehouse and space wasn’t an issue. I don’t have that luxury, I have an empty old showroom I can shoot in that is maybe 12 feet by 50 or 60 feet, or possibly, our lobby area. Either way, it’s near impossible to replicate the sets that our products have been getting photographed on.

So my question is this, are there digital stock images available of empty bedroom settings? I’ve looked at Shutterstock and other stock image sites but I can’t find what I’m looking for. My thought was that I could just shoot everything on a white background and later pull the pieces out in Photoshop and drop into a digital background. Our preference is to have the pieces shot in a scene rather than on a white backdrop. Worst case scenario we can shoot the individual pieces on white but we still need to have a group shot set up.

Here's a couple samples of the work we have had done in the past and the type of room setting digital backgrounds I'm looking for. If you look closely you can see that many of the furniture pieces have been digitally inserted into these backgrounds. The problem with these backgrounds is that the person working on them before me did a horrible job and made a complete mess of the original files making them almost unusable for what I want to do. I'd rather find some new backgrounds to work with than to try and save these.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[Overread]

This might be tricky and good green/white screen work is going to be time intensive and have its own lighting tricks to learn so that you can get shots that look good, professional and natural.

If you can't find what you need on the stock sites you could always consider talking to local estate agents or local building firms - you might be able to arrange early entry to a property after its decorated, but before its furnished. A few minor props and curtains and you could get the shot you're after and it might not cost you all that much to arrange (cost might even just be that they get to make use of the photos as well for their own marketing purposes).

You'll need to try and get as neutral a light angle in the room shots as you can so that when you then light your furniture any shadows are going to match the lighting in the room shot. I'd also ensure that you shoot wider rather than tighter so that any cast shadow can be part of the detail you pull out of the shot and can be imposed partially over the scene shot so that you can blend in natural looking shadows (though avoiding them is the better option with an overhead light source approach. ).

 

[MikeAldrich]

Good advice on the real estate angle, I just bought a house so I'll shoot an email to my agent to get her thoughts on shooting in one of there homes. I'm also in agreement on shooting on the white background, getting it to naturally blend into the digital background could get tricky. The reason I was thinking of shooting on a white background is so I can just do everything in house when I wanted and wouldn't have to take all the furniture and equipment out to several different locations.

 

[Overread]

Aye travel and transport would put your costs up; but don't forget good work blending images together can be very time intensive in itself - only instead of driving its sitting at a desk work. Also consider using green-screens instead of white. I've never done the work myself, but there has to be a very good logical reason why most CGI and such work is done to a green-screen backdrop and not a white screen - you might very well find the use of a green background makes manual/automatic feature selection from the background a lot easier.

I'd look into it and see what the process is. Clearly you want a result that looks real not fake since you want your product to sell on what it is not upon concept drawings.

Keep and eye on costs, time and complexity - it might be cheaper and quicker in the long run to consider setting up a shed for on-site indoor scene generation - nothing complex, but easier to move furniture in and out of and without need to transport it over long distances (and not having to carry it through doors and other obstacles that you'd get if you try shooting in a real house).

 

[MikeAldrich]

Keep and eye on costs, time and complexity - it might be cheaper and quicker in the long run to consider setting up a shed for on-site indoor scene generation - nothing complex, but easier to move furniture in and out of and without need to transport it over long distances (and not having to carry it through doors and other obstacles that you'd get if you try shooting in a real house).

Could you elaborate on the shed used for on-site indoor scene generation, cause that sounds like the route I want to take?

Also, I used to run a green screen photo booth and the software associated with it made the process very easy. The complaints I hear of using a green screen is sometimes the green gets reflected onto the subject and you can still see some green hue even after the green background goes away. I did notice this too on occasion but it wasn't an issue for what I was doing.

 

[Overread]

Green hue could be a problem, though I suspect if you light well and have a good distance from subject to screen it shouldn't reflect too much back.


And the shed idea is simple - a shed structure large enough to house an indoor setup and camera. Ergo build your own studio for the shots. You can have a few bare windows which you can clone in backgrounds for; or even just pull curtains across and have some light behind to simulate the effect.
It might require a bit more space to setup; but the bonus is that it gives you an on-site setup where you can put together scenes; making sure you've got a nice big main door so that you can easily move the items in and out as needed. Having it external to the warehouse also means it won't take up floor space used for storage or packing plus it won't get in the way of normal operations.

 

[Newtricks]

Great question, we have furniture that dates to the mid 19th c. we'd like to sell.

 

[MikeAldrich]

Green hue could be a problem, though I suspect if you light well and have a good distance from subject to screen it shouldn't reflect too much back.


And the shed idea is simple - a shed structure large enough to house an indoor setup and camera. Ergo build your own studio for the shots. You can have a few bare windows which you can clone in backgrounds for; or even just pull curtains across and have some light behind to simulate the effect.
It might require a bit more space to setup; but the bonus is that it gives you an on-site setup where you can put together scenes; making sure you've got a nice big main door so that you can easily move the items in and out as needed. Having it external to the warehouse also means it won't take up floor space used for storage or packing plus it won't get in the way of normal operations.

I like the shed idea and I had been thinking about just building our own sets here, space may be an issue though. I do have an old show room I can convert to a shooting space that may work, I'd probably have to take down a wall.

Thanks so much for the advice you have been quite helpful.

 

[MidnightUK]

I can understand problems with process and cost, but what is wrong with the actual product? Is it something you can manage to improve on? It might be more effective & cheaper in the long run to just find a new photo company.

 

[The_Traveler]

It would seem to me that duplicating camera and shadow angles would be lot more recurring work than building a generic set and lighting it.
off-white walls, a few generic carpets and drapes and you're in business.

In the samples shown, the furniture seems to be uncomfortably placed in the room.
You might find a well proportioned room with strategically placed windows and 'duplicate' it as a set.
THen you could drop in the views through the windows, etc.