35 homes pt1

Photography For Architecture and Real Estate Page 01

All photos and text Charlie Borland, all rights reserved worldwide. No form of reproduction or usage - including copying, altering, or saving of digital image and text files - is permitted without theexpress written permission of Charlie Borland

The Homes

When the client called we set up a meeting and met at their offices. They discussed what their goalswere and that they wanted to photograph not only their homes and townhouses, but also the neighbor-hoods. This was their pitch: We build neighborhoods which homes was a part of. So we took a tour ofseveral different neighborhoods and the homes they thought would make great shots to show the vari-ety of features they offered. I took notes primarily of which house would be best early and other late inthe day so we maximize the light. We started with this first house and open arriving to shoot touredthe house to decide where to start. This first room is the living room and it was to be a challenge: verydark floor, sterile white walls, and black furniture.



This photo was tough; where to put the lights in the scene as some would be required? You can seeobvious problem areas: the coffee table is pitch black under there, the bookcase in the back has dark-ness to it, and the furniture needs highlights. I started with two umbrellas, one in the right back cornerand the other on the right and closer to the camera and you can see the highlights on the wall in backand the backs of the furniture. These lights are to bring up the brightness level in the room. I placed afill light next to the camera and raised to the ceiling to add fill overall. To solve the back bookcase prob-lem, we placed a light behind the far chair to light up the bookcase.



The next issue was the blackrug and black table in themiddle of the living room.How would we bring detailinto that area? I started witha light under the table andlying on the floor. We placeddiffusion material over it tosoften the effect. You cansee in this next photo how itwas working and it was notwell.

That hot texture on the carpet was not acceptable and it was not brightening the area enough. Weturned the light around and pointed it at the couch but that created hot spots. After a few tests I aban-doned the idea. I next placed a light with 10 degree grid left of the camera and pointed it at the table.



I next placed a light with 10 degree grid left of the camera and pointed it at the table.



The next photo was the exposure of just the windows.



This is the final photo. Here are the steps: two umbrellas behind the couches on the right to bring thelight level up in the room. A grid pointed at the table and another light on the back bookshelves hiddenbehind the couch. Lots of ambient light coming through the window to create a feel that light is com-ing through the windows to light the room. A separate exposure for the lamp was shot and added in PSalong with better windows.



This image is a screen capture of the layered PSD files. The background copy was used for dodging andI dodged the rear wall (red arrow) because it had gone to dark. I dodged the highlights on the blackfurniture (yellow arrow) and lightened the floor in the foreground (green arrow). Layer 2 was the past-ing in of a better exposed lamp filament (blue arrow) which was blowing out. And the last layer, #2 wasthe darker window lightly blended in. Finally, the final image was saved with all layers intact as a PSD,then flattened, corrected angles with the Lens Correction tool, and saved as a tiff for the client.



The next setup was the bedroom upstairs. This image is a test shot with one umbrella. The client hatedit and sent his staff off to find props so we moved on to another shot and planned to revisit here later.



This image is now styled nicely andmuch better. I chose a wider angleto shoot as well. I always test withno lights or one light to see whatthe ambient is bringing to the shot.My biggest concern was this side ofthe bed and the dark night stand(see previous photo).

Since I always prefer to have a tex-tured light moving across my subjectrather than at my subject, I startwith a light off to one side of theshot. Here I placed a large umbrellain the left rear corner to the left ofthe camera. This lights job is tobring the brightness level up. I nextplaced a grid light right in front ofthat umbrella and aimed it at the pillows. Here the reason is to create highlights that are harder thanthe umbrellas and this will show texture of the bed spread and so on. Notice the hard shadow on thefront of the night stand? I then placed another umbrella next to the camera to fill in the shadows of thenight stand area and brighten it up.

In looking at the lighting, lets start with the left wall. That umbrella not only lit up the room, but alsoadded a highlight to the edges of the paneled wall (red arrow). I had to feathered this light to keepthat wall from getting to hot and pointed it towards the bathroom door on the right. The grid adds tex-ture and the fill maintains a good contrast.



In PS I darkened the window because it looked quite good, used a dodge layer to lighten the front ofthe night stand and smoothed out the carpet. Then corrected the angles, flattened the image, and didone more curves adjustment layer for the best image as you can see here.



We next moved on to the kitchen. This room also had the same contrast issues: dark floor and whitecabinets. Here again, I wanted a natural light feel supplemented with strobes. The first light we set upwas an umbrella outside the kitchen window to fill the kitchen with light from that direction.

The floor in the foreground and near the hallway was very dark, so I placed an umbrella down the hall-way and pointed at the kitchen. Its power was set to look normal. I also set up two white umbrellas, onfar left of the camera and meant to hit the stools in the foreground and the other next to the camera tofill the whole kitchen. I tested a few more times and found I still needed light on the floor where thestools were, so I added a grid light on a floor stand and pointed it there. It was set at a power to justlighten the area without looking lit.



In PS, I opened the image and created a background copy, here called Layer 0 Copy. One way of burning anddodging areas is to take that background copy and using curves, brighten it to the level you want for the darkareas and here its the hallway and foreground floor. You apply a Hide All layer mask and then with a whitebrush, you can paint in only the areas you want to lighten. I did this with layer and lightened the floor and hall-way slightly. I then went into the lens correction tool and straightened the image. When I did this and croppedit I was left with the choice of cropping into the cabinet on the right or painting that color in and leaving mostof the cabinet. I chose the latter. I created an empty layer, used the Color Picker to select the color of greyright next to the gap and then painted over that area to fill it in. I saved my layered PSD file, flattened and de-livered a TIFF to the client.



We next moved to another house where the clientindicated the rooms they wanted shot. This is the liv-ing room and they originally wanted the whole roomshot and my camera would not go that wide. I couldhave done a panoramic approach, but the client didnot realize that this would be very wide and narrow,so they agreed to the couch and one side of theshelving.

This first image shows the room with just windowlight coming in. You can see that the rear of thecouch was quite bright from the window light andthat the cabinets were also a bit bright. I can controlthe exposure on the cabinets by choosing a fastershutter speed, but I did not want any light on theback of the couch and I need the window light forother parts of the scene. Our eyes are attracted tothe brightest spot in the scene and this was notwhat I wanted to attract the viewers eyes.



The first thing we set up was a blacksheet between two stands to block thatlight from coming into the back of thecouch. I carry two in my grip case for ex-actly this purpose, blocking extraneouslight. You can see on the right that thelight is gone on the back of the couch.

Next, we placed an umbrella on the rightand pointed it at the coffee table. Infront of that umbrella was a grid lightand it was pointed at the couch. Look atthe shadows cast by the coffee table toget an idea of light direction.

Why the grid and umbrella setup? This isa great technique that is widely used inall photography not just interiors. Thegrid, slightly brighter than the umbrellacreates contrast and hard edge high-lights. This shows texture. The umbrellaright behind the grid is much softer lightand acts like a fill light. This approach istwo lights but look like one soft yet con-trasty light. My goal was to brighten thecouch, which was dark as seen in thefirst image above.



The next light was a fill at the camera and it wasused to mainly lighten this end of the couch but toalso affect the rest of the background. Since the sunwas coming through the window and hitting thebookcase, I placed a grid on a stand and placed be-hind the couch and pointed it at the bookcase. I alsopositioned it to hit the couch pillow tops a hair andthe couch. Note the shadow on the carpet? I thenbracketed shutter speeds during the exposure tomakes sure I had a great balance.

One problem I encountered was when I had the per-fect placement of the lights; there was a hot sportreflection in the picture in the upper left. So when Ihad what I felt was my perfect base exposure I turnoff the strobes and shoot at a shutter speed thatgives me close to the same density as the strobedexposures. Here you can see no reflection in the pic-ture.



Here is with strobes on and youcan see the hot spot.

I next opened my base exposurein PS and then immediately dragthe no reflection layer on top,indicated here as layer 1. Youcan see the reflection in the pic-ture. I added a layer mask filledwith black and painted the hotspot out of the picture. At thesame time, since I had a brighterpicture on top of my base layer, Iwent ahead and painted over theshadow in front of the couch andon the floor. This brighter layerweakened the darkness of thatshadow nicely. I also dodged alittle of this end of the couch andworked the black TV screen a lit-tle. The hue/saturation adjust-ment layer was used to bump upthe color of the cabinets a littleand then the curves layer cor-rected overall color



Here is the final pic after lens correctionadjustments.

35 homes pt1

Documents

text charlie borland

text files

real estate page

digital image

form of reproduction

witha light

afill light

black table