This picture of a shoe was actually more complicated than I anticipated. My main problem was the leather was glossier than I realized which led to more difficulty in controlling the reflections but still lighting the shoe where I wanted.
I wanted to create a dark luxurious feel to the shot so decided to light harsher controlled pools of light with Picolites. I first set up a brown card background that was similar to the shoe colour, I illuminated this with one Picolite to create a slight glow and gradient on the colour.
The shoe was held with wire which has been removed in photoshop for the final shot. I illuminated the logo and back of the show with a picolite from above to create some relief detail on the logo and stitching on the shoe. Another Picolite with a projection attachment allowed me to carefully control the lighting in the heel only of the shoe. A fourth Picolite came down on the front of the shoe with a controlled reflected highlight not letting it get too bright. The front edge of the sole of the shoe and leather need some light but this had to be subtle so another picolite with barn doors was directed at a sheet of white card to create a very subtle reflection on the front edge, this is barely visible unless you look closely but it was an essential part of the image that Urs and I were eventually happy with.
Finally the glow of light on top of the shoe down to the toe was created by shining a P70 into the white walls in the corner of my studio. This careful combination allowed me to achieve a luxurious product shot. The benefit of the picolites is obvious as their small size and the accessories available allows me to precisely control lighting in difficult scenarios such as this one.
