Footprint Photography is a freelance commercial photography company based in the Sheffield area. We do a variety of photography from weddings to portraits to commercial and lingerie photography.

We teach photography too and I was recently approached to provide a Product Photography workshop by Paul Beighton Auctioneers. I went across to their business premises in Thurcroft to review how they currently photograph their items for auction and to offer advice and guidance.

The sort of things they auction range from small items of jewellery and pottery to very large pieces of furniture such as sideboards, wardrobes and even large pianos.

Before the workshop they were currently using a couple of LED light boxes but these were wrong for the smaller items and woefully inadequate for the large items.

I had taken my studio lights with me and set these up to show how the light can be shone directly or bounced to create the perfect lighting for any subject. Studio lights are much more powerful than LED panels and over a few hours showed I them how to position the lights to get reflection free images of both small and large items and how to utilise natural light as much as possible

I offered advice on the equipment they needed and some instruction on how to process the photographs in either Lightroom or Photoshop

They were delighted with the results of the workshop, bought some new equipment and are now going great guns