There’s no getting away from it things have been complicated recently, but problems are there to be resolved. The main issue with this commission is the the client is based in my homeland of Northern Ireland and the products, a complete range of high quality mattresses are here in Devon. In an ideal situation the client would have flown across to a perfect white studio possibly with an infinite cove and a huge Chimera roof light, something like a car studio. But, as I say things have been complicated recently and sometimes pragmatism is the order of the day.
Although we had a studio space allocated for this job, due to current restrictions the most practical approach was to shoot the eight mattresses in a nearby bed showroom. The client was clearly putting a lot of trust in a photographer who they’d not worked with before to deliver whilst working remotely and alone.
Working to reference shots the decision was made that the showroom, though not ideal would work. In many ways the shoot wasn’t unlike many of the motorbike location shoots that we do with the bonus that we were warm and weren’t going to get wet! Unlike the bike shoots the mattresses were going to be cut out from the background so as long as colour spill was avoided we were going to be OK, so lots of white sheeting was placed on the floors.
As ever the most time consuming aspect of location photography is getting the gear in and setting it all up. Once the first mattress is lit properly the others just get swapped and shot. The task is to balance large reasonably soft light sources withilst still showing the subtleties of the form and fabric.
Because these are a new range the branding hasn’t been applied yet so we double-shot some brand panels to be cloned in. The client received files with clipping paths drawn as well as layers with neutral backgrounds and applied shadows. To be honest the client’s designer may well re-work these files but the bulk of the heavy lifting has been done here, the mattress is removed from the showroom and can be placed on whatever background the client chooses.
I have to say that last thing last week I noticed that this fantastic reference was posted to Google, it was a great way to end the week.
We appointed Andrew to do a product shoot for us, we gave him a basic brief of what we wanted and he totally exceeded my expectations. Andrew went above and beyond to ensure the shoot went perfectly, I didn’t even need to be on site as he took care of everything for us. He’s also a very nice guy, which helps. Would highly recommend.
Thank you Philip!