This week we've been photographing a lot of portraits. But one of our regular commercial clients came in with his latest creation.
Stephen Mitchell (
http://www.irishwood.com/) is a fantastically talented carpenter. He makes bespoke one-off designs from all kinds of different woods. Each time he completes a project we take a photograph so he can keep a portfolio/record of his work.
His latest creation was four 'high chairs' made from walnut.

Lighting wood furniture can be a little tricky. The main thing is not to use too much 'soft' light. So lighting just using big softboxes isn't a great idea. The problem is that you need to show both the detail and depth in the wood and contrast is needed. So in most cases we use quite narrow lighting from odd angles in order to highlight the detail and show the different shades within the wood.
In this case the main light was a small (60cm) softbox back left and then a narrow reflector with a grid front left. We then used a large soft box as a fill on the right. NOTE! The softbox was just used as a fill, it's not the main light.

We're not trying to acheive something 'arty' here. This is a record of his creation and the main priority is to show the piece of furniture in detail and capture the wood colour..

Techy notes: Main exposure was around f8. Background is white cove which goes to light grey when partially lit. Canon 5D 24-70mm L2.8 lens. Processing from RAW in Capture One.
Commercial Photography Ireland, Commercial Product Photography, Commercial Photography Westmeath Athlone, Arts & CraftsLabels: Arts Crafts Photography, Athlone Westmeath, Commercial Photography, Lighting Technique, Product Photography, Woodwork