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.

I like the composition on this one as you can see how the kitchen connects to the great room - it's really all one gigantic space and I didn't want to break it up. That's one factor that dictated why the shot is so wide, the other, believe it or not, is a burned out lightbulb. You can't see it, but there's a dead lightbulb that's been cropped out.

Talk about open space…

If you were to go through a bunch of my other interior images, you'll notice that these two don't really fit - it's not the architecture, it's the tonality. The light, muted colors make for images with very little contrast. They don't fit into the work I typically do, which is one reason why I like them so much.

In what seems to be a different life for me, I was a piano major back in college. Working this architectural shoot was a flashback to those days, only this time I was in a brand-spankin' new performing arts center decked out with custom-tailored spaces for each arts discipline.

I was racking my brain, thinking of a way to present these images with a story to accompany it, and the only one I could come up with was fairly straight-forward: the process. Here we go…

These are full-day shoots, not just an hour or two, but eight. Truth be told, I could have used a tiny bit of extra time each day. The first hour and a half is spent working out the lighting. These spaces are dark, and when I say dark, I mean dark. They are dimly-lit for presentation reasons and don't convey with even a camera that has the best dynamic range technology allows us today - it just doesn't work by default. That's why so much time and energy is spent adjusting the lighting, doing test shots, doing post-production, evaluating, and further tweaking the lighting. In what seems to be a never-ending process, it eventually does just that, ends. At this point, I'm able to actually get to work. From this point on, the lighting will not change, at all. Two reasons why - once it works perfectly for one image, it'll work perfectly for the rest as I'm photographing the same space. The other reason is psychological during the review/presentation of the images - if the viewer views the first ten photos, then photo eleven is lit differently, they will often think, 'what's different about this image?'. We don't want that - we want consistency.

Like I said, after the heavy-lifting of the lighting has been done, it's onto shooting. With spaces as large as these, I find it best to shoot a section and dump it to post-production immediately. Why? Because if I screwed up my perspective I need to correct it immediately. That's why I shoot the images, pop the memory card, leave the camera and tripod, view the images, evaluate, and finally adjust and shoot again or move on. Doing it that way saves me time when I do goof on perspective - it happens. It's incredibly difficult to make every angle and line appear the way it does in real life when you're looking through a viewfinder, even with the grid turned on.

Shoot all morning, post-production during lunch, shoot through the afternoon, post-production during the late-afternoon, then finally onto the 'detail' shots. The post-production on the detail shots are done at home after everything's packed-up as there's no time left in the day. Those shots better have been correct as there are no second chances. That brings me to a larger point - there really aren't any second chances in this line of photography. You can't attempt to get the shot all day, miss the opportunity, and ask for more time - there is no more time. Whatever space you're shooting is temporarily out-of-order to be photographed - after you're done, it goes back to being lived in.

On a personal note, this place was a blast to shoot.

Back to interiors this week.

So here's the deal - you may have noticed a common thread between this kitchen and the previous one. No, not the similar composition (well, yeah), but rather the staging - citrus fruit! First oranges, now lemons. Believe it or not, I didn't pick either of those items for staging purposes, but they both fit really well. Kudos to the homeowners, they know what's going on.

I'm trying to think of a more interesting story about this shot other than oranges and lemons, but there really isn't one. This kitchen was captured in three separate shots, this happened to be the one I liked the most. The first image showed the entire kitchen, the second showed it from the opposite angle, and this one showed the highlights without showing the surrounding space. To me, the surroundings are less important than the highlights, and I guess that's why I chose this one.

I wouldn't mind having this as my kitchen, would you?

Most of the time, we tend to pop a wide-angle lens on our camera to get a shot of a space like this, but that won't work here. We don't need to see everything to get a feel for the space, so in fact, the closer we get, the better. Instead of a wide shot, we tighten in with a 24-70mm, right around 35mm. Now 35mm may not seem very tight, but when you're capturing a space as opposed to a person, it's actually very tight. The added advantage of shooting at 35mm is that the countertops are compressed to appear almost like they would in reality. If we're shooting wide, the countertops appear wide - if we shoot tight, we get closer to what our eyes see.

If that's the staircase, just imagine the rest of the place…

While many interior shots need a significant prep and post-production time, the 'details' don't. Typically, they can be done on-the-fly and shot with ambient light. In fact, it's better when they are shot with ambient light as the captured image is very representative of the true feeling of the space.

There's not much to say other than I wouldn't mind living there.

Just a nice kitchen, that's all. No story, just a photo.

Enjoy.

You wouldn't know it from the photo above that there's 22 inches of snow on the ground. I would. Not only that, but the homeowner knows it all too well - her car was crushed by her car-port, which collapsed under the weight of the snow. Sheesh.

Anyway, I just liked that photo - that's why I decided to post it. You'd think I used lights coming from the right, as seen by the shadows coming from the objects near the fireplace - but I didn't, it's all exposure fusion. The shadows are from the natural light shining in through the windows - can't do much about that.

Onto the snow:

See, it's crazy out there!

This was a really nice kitchen to photograph. Simple, not extravagant, very functional - just a really nice kitchen.

There's no complicated lighting scenario here - it's all pretty plain. The story here is actually about a memory card - a corrupted memory card. Yeah, that's right, I actually had a memory card go bad on me. The brand will go unnamed, but I called up their tech support and asked politely for a refund, and they gladly gave it to me seeing as how their product didn't fulfill its end of the bargain. Anyways, this is the exact spot card went down. I had just taken my first set of exposures, then the card died, I panicked, then replaced the card immediately. I'm not a superstitious person or anything, but I made sure the card didn't get near any of my other equipment, just to be safe.

Same kitchen, different angle. It's not often I get to shoot vertical, due to the restrictions in real estate MLS systems, but this one called for it. The only part I'm not a huge fan of in this shot is the glare on the hardwood floor. Just like over-exposed windows, glare is a necessary evil. It not only shows you where and how bright the light is coming in, it also shows you the texture of your floor - whether it's flat or glossy. You can always cut down the reflection with a circular polarizer, but you'll never really eliminate it if you're using exposure fusion or some sort of HDR method for creating interior photographs.