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.