I've photographed a good number of showrooms over the last few years, and 2016 has got off to a great start in that regard. I've been lucky enough to be asked back by Clive Christian Scotland for the third year running, have picked up a good handful of Kitchens International commissions, the Glasgow showroom included, and have a new client Braco Designs on board, I've shot their showroom on the back of a case study earlier this year, I'm looking forward to working more with them all more this year.
There can be a fair bit of retouching required when you're shooting showrooms as you can see from the starter image below, the tight clearances mean it can be a struggle to find places to hid the lights, it can also limit your choices for angles to shoot, integral doormats can be a problem at times as well. Lloking at this assessment ambient exposure below we can see to expose the ceiling and upper half of the frame properly we're losing the highlights from the daylight blasting in the bottom half of the frame, further to that the doormat is a distraction, looking at the finished frame above you can see all these issues were solved using lighting and some post-production. It's worth pointing out that this image is also a vertical planar stitch made using the shifts from a perspective control lens.
Extensive lighting was used to bring a bit of dimension and separation in these earlier Clive Christian shots.
The above shot is now no longer possible as the back display has been completely changed.
I'll be posting more shots from the new showroom layout very soon, this job has only recently been photographed. Of course you have to get the outside as well, streets don't always photograph well in this regard, careful cropping goes a long way.
Working in the Kitchens International showroom on Great Western Road was a challenge, not in the actual terms of content, their showroom is stunning, however they do have floor to ceiling glass at the front, which looks out on to the street, makes sense right, it is a showroom after all. Anyone who has tried photographing interiors will know this is a particular challenge though in terms of balancing the exposure, especially when there is sunlight pouring in. Let's have a look at one of the ambient frames shot for assessment.
As you can see there are fairly obvious huge problems with this image. We've completely lost the highlights, and the shadows are looking in pretty poor shape as well. With some corrective lighting and a bit of post-production know how these problems can be overwhelmed, this one took a while though, we got there in the end with this shot.
There were a lot of quirky details to pick up on in this front part of the showroom. Some of which we can see here.
The Braco Designs showroom in Braco near Crieff was a real joy to work in. It's a fairly new conversion, the top floor has still to be finnished, I'm hopefully heading back over there soon to photograph that fro them as well. Here's some shots from the ground floor.
Once again extensive lighting was used to balance out the exposure looking at this shot you can see why.
To the finished article.
The full set of this showroom can be seen here. So as you can see, if you're wanting to show your showroom in it's best light, you need to get someone on board who knows what they're doing, whether that's myself or another interior photographer, don't skimp, do it right and you'll have images that will last as long as your display.