Kitchen Confidential

Over the weekend I had a different assignment to my usual work. Kitchens....and other cabinetry.Kirner Kitchens were looking to improve their web images as well build a brochure of recent work that they have completed and I was asked whether I could provide some imagery. Some of Kirner's Kitchens Clients were  contacted and I found myself traveling down to the South Coast with the owner.

Photographing interiors is a lot about organization and a nitpicky eye. Photography is only a small part of the job. Dishwashing comes into it too oddly enough. At one kitchen we found ourselves doing a little bit of cleaning up so as to get the room looking spotless. For the most part though the owners were more than happy to have us come and photograph their kitchens and made sure that the rooms were absolutely spotless before we entered.  the kind of floors you could eat off of in fact.

This doesn't mean that the kitchen is completely photographically spotless and I was quite surprised to find how long I spent in front of the computer touching things up, like a newspaper popping out below the fridge in the above photograph. Moral of the story - make sure it isn't there to start with. In this image I also boosted the light coming from the fridge by placing a strobe inside and firing it via a light sync (Nikon's CLS didn't work as I'd hoped, probably because the sensor was blocked by the mayonnaise). Not having large lights with brollies attached also meant playing with small hot shoe strobes and dragging the shutter. This introduces white balance issues though, so be sure to get some white balance references for later Photoshop work.