How do I... Take (professional) pictures of my work?

[jazzflute]

So I have almost everything that has been mentioned so far, I think:

Good camera equipment
Large assortment of lenses
Professional lights
Softboxes (for the lights; diffusion is important, especially when lighting reflective things like shiny wood)
Backdrops aka seamless (for big pieces)
Shooting table (for small pieces)
Scrims, gobos, and flags (Not giving those definitions up; gotta save something for the class, right?)
A site big enough to host
10 years experience as a professional retoucher in the printing industry
Product Manager at Adobe (If not full-blown, I'm at least a junior-ninja with Photoshop and Lightroom...)
Extensive experience as a technology trainer
Somewhat serious photographer... Well, as serious as I ever get, fwiw...

In fact, I can only think of one thing I do not have:

TIME.

I would love to do this, and I've successfully taught photography before; it's a blast!

But to do it right, it takes a lot of prep and time, and I simply do not have that now, and for at least the rest of this year.

If we wanted to backburner this idea until Spring, I may be more available to do this then, so consider my hat thrown into the focus ring for the future, and of course nothing precludes anyone from doing training in the interim.

K

 

[Henry W]

While there are lot's of resources out there on the internet, here's a woodworker (John Lucas) that is a retired pro shooter explaining his home set-up (for small items). WoodCentral has a Photography forum that is not very heavily used, but there are a few posters there who really know their stuff and readily answer specific questions.

Here's a link that shows 4 posts where John details the type of process and equipment that he is using to get his shots.

http://www.woodcentral.com/woodworking/photography/index.pl/page/5/md/index/#m_455978

It does not answer the "how to shoot a large WW piece" question that many seem to have, but it is instructive to me to read about what and how John does this.

Henry

 

[Glennbear]

I agree that a class would be nice but in the interim Bas started a thread a while back which may be helpful:

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/forums/showthread.php?t=28844&highlight=pictures

 

[Cbozz]

Since this is both a photo thing and a tool thing, I thought I'd share my go-anywhere quick setup light gizmo. It's an Irwin clamp with threaded studs on each end, reinforced with fiberglass and epoxy, along with a cheapo mini ball head and a flash shoe. With an optically triggered flash and some rogue modifiers, I can light just about anything reasonably well with three of these. I use up to 6 for architectural photography.

The key thing here is setup time. Clamp it to a door jamb, furniture, anything stable and I'm ready to go. No fussing with light stands, plugs, or cables.