We’ve worked with British designer Joseph Kigonya on several occassions, photographing his beautiful, premium quality men’s shoes. Providing some pointers and reference, he’s nevertheless allowed us a little creativity, entrusting us to showcase his products in a suitably eye-catching light. We love being able to test different backdrops and surfaces with product photography, and usually have an idea what will work well before raiding our vast studio prop store. Keen to emphasise the elegance and premium quality of his Wedding collection, we used both black and white perspex for glossy, reflective images. A large softbox provides soft shadows and diffuse “hot spots” on the lustrous leathers and helps sculpt form in a flattering manner, leaving us to concentrate on compositions. As ever, colour checking is essential to ensure faithful reproduction of the subjects, and a few seconds spent with some cleaning spray and a cloth for de-dusting in the studio can save you hours of spot removal in post production.
Prop floorboards provided a real-world setting befitting this wedding collection and we shot several compositions wide to allow cropping for banner images. Finally, we decided to push the boat out a little to capture some of the special character of these designs, so using a little fishing wire (removed easily in photoshop), we suspended several shoes and photographed them to include their soft shadow. It’s a simple, but effective trick which lends the shoes the gravitas they deserve (gravity notwithstanding…), whilst retaining real-world authenticity frequently missing from commercial photography. We hope you like what we’ve done…
