Photographing bed

[Kenneth Walton]

Hi guys, I'm jealous of all the fellas with nice photos of their finished pieces, and the iphone camera just isn't cutting it. I'm putting together a setup based on Mike Pekovitch's article in FWW, so far so good (until the wife finds out I moved all the living room furniture to make room).

My problem is that now I'm making a bed - headboard, footboard, detachable side rails. How should I photograph this? I see some people make "mini" side rails so it all fits in a picture better. Is that the best way? Prop the head/ footboard up against something? Just use the full bed and stand waaay back? I'm not sure I have the room to get a good shot with it assembled.

Thanks for the help!

[Dave Richards]

In most living rooms you'd be hard pressed to show the entire bed in a single photo unless you use a very wide angle lens and that will create some distortion. And unless you can get a ton of light or use a tripod and a long exposure, depth of field will necessarily be shallow allowing you to get only part of the bed "in focus." The short side rails are a great idea for putting the headboard and foot board close enough together to avoid those problems. I wouldn't lean the headboard against the wall if you want a nice photograph of it. In fact I would keep the bed away from the wall so you don't have dense shadows from the bed falling on the wall.

[Myk Rian]

How would you do the mattress with short rails?

[Dave Richards]

Short mattress?

I wouldn't include a mattress that way. If I needed to photograph a bed with the mattress and box spring on it, I certainly wouldn't be doing it in my living room or anywhere else in my house. I'd be working in a space large enough to allow some reasonable working room for the camera and some lights.

[Jamie Buxton]

You might think about the needed distance from camera to furniture, and work back from there to select a "studio" location. For instance, you might be able to put the furniture in the garage, and the camera in the driveway. Or shoot completely outdoors. Using natural light will restrict when you can take photos, but maybe you can deal with that.

You might want a big back drop. You can buy an official one from photography-supply places, but a much less-expensive one can be a canvas painters dropcloth from Home Depot or the like. You might have to Photoshop out a seam in the dropcloth, but that's cheap compared to the cost of an official one.

[Kenneth Walton]

Yeah, I wouldn't include the mattress. So it sounds like making short rails is the way to go, similar to this:

http://furnituremaker.com/galleries/thorsenbed.htm