Photographing Furniture

In this live photography workshop, now available to watch as a replay, Karl shoots two antique chairs.

As he gradually builds his lighting setup and experiments with various approaches, you'll get a step-by-step view of a professional working in real time.

Answering audience questions as he works and demonstrating a huge range of useful insights and techniques, Karl gives you the kind of fly-on-the-wall access usually reserved for photography assistants.

In this class:

  • How to photograph furniture
  • Lighting techniques for furniture photography
  • How to use DIY flags
  • Achieving the right lighting ratio in product photography

If you enjoy this class, be sure to check out Photographing Wrapped and Packaged Food and Rim Lighting for Product Photography.

Questions? Please post them in the comments section below.

Image

© Karl Taylor

Image

© Karl Taylor

Comments

    1. Hi, my focus point if I remember correctly was on the back arm of the closest chair and then my depth of field gave me enough sharpness for the second chair which however is not as sharp as the front chair but this isn’t that important because the chairs are identical and therefore everything that a viewer needs to understand can be understood from the front chair. The sharpness on the back chair is still quite sharp.

  2. ahrayeji

    hi Karl tnx u so much for this amazing tutorial.im new here and pardon me if i asking silly questions or my english its not well enough.
    but first : its a photoshoot of 2 chairs.how you lights a complete furniture set ? like 10 our 12 chair and sofas?
    and 2 : is there any tutorial that shows how to light a living room ?can i have link ?

    1. Author

      Hi, Karl is away on annual leave at the moment, and I believe is the best person to answer this question for you! He’ll be back in the studio on the 18th so I’ll be sure to raise this with him to get back to you 🙂

    2. Hi, thank you and I’m glad you are enjoying the classes. We don’t have a class on lighting 10 or 12 chairs and a sofa together as this would be very difficult to do and we can’t understand why a client would want this if it was specifically for just the chairs as the shot would be too busy. IF what you mean is more how to light an interior for architects or interior designers then this is more commonly done with getting a really good overall lighting and then adding ‘pops’ of light to specific parts of a room with a portable studio light and a honeycomb grid to create highlights or patches of light in certain areas or to reveal certain things. The camera is fixed and then you take several shots, one is your main ‘base’ lighting and then many more shots with pockets of light added to key areas. You then layer the images together in PS and choose the best ‘pockets’ or ‘pops’ of light and blend them ontop of your main base lighting layer. These classes will give you some ideas of what I mean:
      https://visualeducation.com/class/chanel-perfume-in-flowers/
      https://visualeducation.com/class/acid-gold-bike-shoot/

        2. Hi, see this class for pricing https://visualeducation.com/class/pricing-your-photography/ there are also examples of pricing for different genres of photography in some of our business download documents. How much you charge though depends on the standard of your work, your place in the market and other costs such as studio, equipment included or not etc etc, usage fees or not etc. You can find much more information by watching through the business classes as opposed to me just dumping a figure here that would then be misleading to most other people reading this.

  5. Thank you for sharing your thought process. Truly helping and inspiring.
    Any idea when you will release the “table” photography class ? I am looking forward to it!

    1. Hi Nicolas, thank you. If you go to your customer home page you will find our release calendar on that page, if you click ‘open full calendar’ the dates for most upcoming courses should be listed. All the best Karl.

  6. You really do care! I’m quite sure you remember my email in the not to distant past. Thanks Karl! People like you a very very “rare.” Very much appreciated!

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