Set Up for Photographing Furniture Outside

[sakurasanta86]

Hi everyone. My name is Phil and I run a small furniture business as a side gig here in Southern California. I work out of a storage unit and end up taking a lot of photos of the furniture outside of the storage unit as it would be very inconvenient to move the furniture any where else for photos. I simply use my Iphone as a camera also for convenience as I can upload directly to various places online. I'm looking for ways to improve my photos. I'm specifically wondering if there is some kind of (hopefully fairly simple) set up that I could use to hide the fact them I'm shooting the photo in front of a storage door. Basically, something that would change the background. But I would also appreciate any other tips or critiques of my photos (which I'm attaching below) that might improve them. I'm not an experienced photographer but I'm all for ways to improve on what I'm doing. Thanks!

 

[sergezap]

It looks like your attachment is missing in action.

 

[mk04447]

I think the new iPhones can shoot in RAW, I would suggest doing that and getting a subscription to LR.

 

[weepete]

For what you are doing an iphone should be sufficent I would think. You can get photography stands and different backdrops, I just got a cheap set from e-bay for shooting a little portraiture, I think mine is 3mx2.5m. There's also whole host of backgrounds to choose from, from plain colour to textured and fake walls etc. Even a large microfibre cloth jury rigged would probably suffice.

Photography wise it's mostly lighting you'll be dealing with, so pick times like the morning where the sun is only casting a little shadow and there's not a big difference in the darks and lights where the lighting is coming from behind you and a little to the side.

Of course, you will be limited to what you can do with natrural light but to move beyond that and fully control how your furniture is lit you'd really need some kind of studio setup with multiple off camera flashes, controllers and light modifiers (and a camera with a hotshoe). Product photography is a genre in it's own right and can be very complicated. A book called Light, Science and Magic is pretty much considered the go to for learning this kind of stuff.