This first image is lit with three strobes aimed towards the ceiling and wall. There are a couple of tricky spots with this type of space, the most difficult challenge is not showing the flashes in the reflection of the windows. The second challenge is showing the view, but not in that 'fake', 'painted-on' type of way. See, it's super-bright outside - I'm actually shooting at ISO 100, as low as my camera can go, and f/4. Why f/4 and not higher? Well, when shooting with small flashes as light-sources, f/4 is about the maximum limit you can go without straining the strobe. If I'm shooting a ISO 100 and f/4, the flashes will be pushed to about 1/2-power and sometimes 1/1-power. That means the flash-tube is being stressed and there are longer recycle times. You can always double-up on flashes, but then the space begins to look over-lit. While lighting up the room, shooting at the low ISO, and f/4, the view is still overexposed. This is where a small amount of image manipulation comes in. The first exposure is what I just described, the second is with the flashes turned off, then pump the shutter speed up to 1/500th or 1/1000th, and that will capture the view. Layer the two on top of each other in Photoshop, mask-in the view, decrease the opacity, and you're done - we come out with an image that looks like that.

This second image is almost as different as it gets - its not about lighting, it's about composition. This was taken at f/2.8, and that's important because of what's in-focus and what's slightly-unsharp. I played around with making the railing the focus, then the steps, neither of which worked well. I decided that the furniture was the focal-point and committed to it with the shallow depth-of-field. It's sort of odd to think that 80%+ of the image isn't tack-sharp, but I kinda like it, that's what worked for me so I stuck with it.