36 homes pt2

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 next photo had us moving right into the dining room. Since most of our lights were set up, we justturned them around to light the dining area. You can see the raw file here and its need for lights andPS work. We started by setting up one large umbrella on camera right about 3:00. It was sitting on theedge of the kitchen. We next added a fill on the right of the camera and a small strobe on a floor standand grid was placed right behind this wall and column on the left.

The purpose of thegrid light was toplace some light onthe back of thechairs and also lightthe tops of some ofthe chair seats,something no otherlight would do forme. The last lightwas another largeumbrella on cameraleft and was used tolight the short wallon the left.



This image shows the shot after all light-ing is in place.

Here is the Photoshop example. We haveour base layer as the background andlayer 1 with mask is the darker light fix-tures. I drug that exposure on top,added a mask, and painted in the darkerexposure. Layer 2 is the darker windowwhich was also painted over. The lastlayer is a Curves adjustment layer and itenhanced contrast slightly and bright-ened the image.ing is in place.



Next we moved to the staircase. I wanted to light foran effect and show all the detail with more of a spotlighting effect. First, notice the upper stairwell and thepicture on the wall. We started with a grid pointed atthe picture.



To control the contrast, there is also an umbrella upthere to prevent the rest of the upper stairwell fromgoing dark. Remember, the grid in front of the um-brella? Now notice the props on the lower right of thestairwell? At about 2:00 o’clock is another grid spot-lighting that area in the foreground. Also on cameraright is a soft white umbrella to again, control con-trast. On camera left is an umbrella that fills in theshadows on the stairs. It lights the wall and door onfar left as well as the hand rail and front of thesteps. And then we turned on the lamp in the rearfor more visual depth.



As I study the shot on the laptop screen I think myimage on the right may be done, but yet somethingseems missing and it is ‘snap’ in the shot. It needs alittle more contrast. Then it dawns on me the stepsare to dark. I have my assistant place a strobe on afloor stand and with a grid at the top of the stairs andpointed back down the stairs creating a highlight ontop of each stair step.

This is an excellent approach to creating more crea-tive lighting. When I went into PS, all I did was add aCurves adjustment layer and add some subtle con-trast for more snap.



House 2The client then had us move to another house and we started in the kitchen. This kitchen is the samelayout as the previous home, but had natural wood and lighter floors.

I chose the same approach, a large umbrella outside to send light into the kitchen. However, this timethe sun was also coming through the kitchen window and creating hot spots, so I used a large diffusionpanel clamped to a light stand and leaned against the house to have a totally white window diffuser. Ithen removed the umbrella and shined the light right through the diffuser. This approach is only tobring the brightness level up.



You can see the kitchen is brighter. Iplaced one large umbrella next to thecamera on the left to act as fill andbrighten the chairs and cabinets on theright.

One thing the client said they had to have was the etching inthe glass on the front of the pantry door. So we placed a lightinside and tried several placements before settling on bounc-ing it off the ceiling inside the pantry. It actually is readablewithout the light inside, but has no depth and gives the feelingthat the pantry is a dark hole.



You can now see light inside thepantry. The other issue I had wasthere is a hot area on the cabinets(red arrow) from the window creat-ing a reflection.

So as I do in every assignment, I shoot brack-eted exposures without the strobes on.Whether I will need them or not, you justnever know. This shot shows that image andthe darker cabinets.



In this screen capture of the Photoshop layers, the first layer is a Curves adjustment layer.

This was used to get rid of some of the color. The image was quite warm from the ceiling spots so Iadded some blue/cyan, and just a hint of it. In this image the center light in the three hanging lightswas burned out, so I copied the glowing yellow of a different light and pasted it into the center and thisis layer 2. The top layer is the hot cabinets and you can see this with that layer turned off.

Photography For Architecture and Real Estate


I opened the best imagewhere strobes were notused; using the movetool I drug it on top ofthis image. I created alayer mask and using asoft white brush, Ipainted the darker cabi-nets in as shown here.

The final image shows the proper cabinet exposure,foreground, and pantry and is corrected using thelens correction tool.



The BathroomOur next stop was to shoot a bathroom. Oh my gosh! There was no room to work in here at all. In factyou can see where I had to be to get the shot. I was squeezed in here so tight that I could not comeout for fear of bumping the camera. My assistant moved everything. You can also see the main light isin the doorway and another light is next to the camera.

For lighting we used the three lights. The one inthe door was the key light and much strongerthan the fill. I also had the assistant place an-other light in the shower stall and bounce into arear corner and set at a power just to addbrightness and keep it from going dark in there.



Once I had the lighting looking asgood as I could, we raised the poweron both strobes +1 stop and shotagain without touching the cameraand again at +1.5 brighter. The rea-son will be apparent shortly.

Then I turned off all the lights and shot justthe fixtures bracketing the exposures.



In Photoshop, I opened the base image and then opened the +1 brighter exposure.

Using the move tool I drug it on top of the base exposure, added a Hide All mask, selected a soft whitebrush, and painted the darker wall above the bathtub. This brought in the lighter wall. I also paintedover the cabinets and rug on the floor. Then I opened the lamps exposure, drug that over, added an-other mask and painted those in. Next was a Curves Adjustment layer to add a hint of contrast andbrighten the image followed by a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to pump up the color.



This was all followed by the Lens Correction tool to straighten the edges and then delivered to the cli-ent.



Master Bedroom

The last photo to be shot inside this house was the master bedroom. This was also the most difficult ofall the shots. The first consideration was how to light and where to put the lights since we were show-ing the whole room. The first light we tried was placing a light behind the TV stand on the left to addlight to the bed.

We tried this andyou can see the hotspots it created be-hind the TV stand. Itried a few optionsusing black Cine foilaround the light tostop the light spill-age on the wall, butit did work, so weremoved it. I nextplaced the behindthe curtain at thefar window. With agrid on it, it waspointed at the pil-lows on the bedand this workedfine.



Look at this close-up and you can see the light head be-hind the curtain.



The next spot to consider was the foot of the bed which was a bit dark, so we placed a light with gridon a floor stand and placed it behind the couch to light the foot of the bed. On camera left is a largeumbrella pointed at the couch. On camera right there is a light box aimed at the bed and a grid aimedat the right side of the couch and right side of the table. You can see these in the lower right corner.

One more umbrella was added as a fill from the cameras position. The windows did not appear to blowout so we did not shoot another exposure for them, but we did bracket for the lamps just in case.



Once in Photoshop, the first problem was to eliminate the shadows on the ceiling cast by the lamps hit-ting the bed frame. The first step I took was to use the Polygonal Lasso tool to make a wide selectionaround the light shafts. My primary reason for this step was to protect the ceiling edge right above thebed and not have any retouching drop into there.



Duplicating my background layer, I went inside this selection and began using the Clone Stamp andSpot Healing Brush, switching back and forth and very carefully blended the colors all together.

The next step was to add one of the bracketed layers that was brighter by +1 stop. Using the MoveTool I drug this image on top and created Layer 1. Adding a Hide All mask, I painted the front of thenightstand just to lighten it a hair since there was no place to put a light to brighten it up. I followedthat with a Curves Adjustment Layer to add a hint of contrast and then a Levels Adjustment Layer toset Black and White points.



I next saved my PSD layered file, flattened the image and use the Lens Correction Tool to straightenthe image.

36 homes pt2

Documents

text charlie borland

text files

digital image

real estate page

form of reproduction

camera right

light onthe

camera left