Photography For Architecture and Real Estate: The Homes

Photography For Architecture and Real Estate
Page 01
The Homes
When the client called we set up a meeting and met at their offices. They discussed what their goals
were and that they wanted to photograph not only their homes and townhouses, but also the neighborhoods. This was their pitch: We build neighborhoods which homes was a part of. So we took a tour of
several different neighborhoods and the homes they thought would make great shots to show the variety of features they offered. I took notes primarily of which house would be best early and other late in
the day so we maximize the light. We started with this first house and open arriving to shoot toured
the house to decide where to start. This first room is the living room and it was to be a challenge: very
dark floor, sterile white walls, and black furniture.
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 the
express written permission of Charlie Borland
Page 02
This photo was tough; where to put the lights in the scene as some would be required? You can see
obvious problem areas: the coffee table is pitch black under there, the bookcase in the back has darkness to it, and the furniture needs highlights. I started with two umbrellas, one in the right back corner
and the other on the right and closer to the camera and you can see the highlights on the wall in back
and the backs of the furniture. These lights are to bring up the brightness level in the room. I placed a
fill light next to the camera and raised to the ceiling to add fill overall. To solve the back bookcase problem, we placed a light behind the far chair to light up the bookcase.
Page 03
The next issue was the black

rug and black table in the
middle of the living room.
How would we bring detail
into that area? I started with
a light under the table and
lying on the floor. We placed
diffusion material over it to
soften the effect. You can
see in this next photo how it
was working and it was not
well.
That hot texture on the carpet was not acceptable and it was not brightening the area enough. We
turned the light around and pointed it at the couch but that created hot spots. After a few tests I abandoned the idea. I next placed a light with 10 degree grid left of the camera and pointed it at the table.
Page 04
I next placed a light with 10 degree grid left of the camera and pointed it at the table.
Page 05
The next photo was the exposure of just the windows.
Page 06
This is the final photo. Here are the steps: two umbrellas behind the couches on the right to bring the
light level up in the room. A grid pointed at the table and another light on the back bookshelves hidden
behind the couch. Lots of ambient light coming through the window to create a feel that light is coming through the windows to light the room. A separate exposure for the lamp was shot and added in PS
along with better windows.
Page 07
This image is a screen capture of the layered PSD files. The background copy was used for dodging and
I dodged the rear wall (red arrow) because it had gone to dark. I dodged the highlights on the black
furniture (yellow arrow) and lightened the floor in the foreground (green arrow). Layer 2 was the pasting in of a better exposed lamp filament (blue arrow) which was blowing out. And the last layer, #2 was
the 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.
Page 08
The next setup was the bedroom upstairs. This image is a test shot with one umbrella. The client hated
it and sent his staff off to find props so we moved on to another shot and planned to revisit here later.
Page 09
This image is now styled nicely and

much better. I chose a wider angle
to shoot as well. I always test with
no lights or one light to see what
the ambient is bringing to the shot.
My biggest concern was this side of
the bed and the dark night stand
(see previous photo).
Since I always prefer to have a textured light moving across my subject
rather than at my subject, I start
with a light off to one side of the
shot. Here I placed a large umbrella
in the left rear corner to the left of
the camera. This lights job is to
bring the brightness level up. I next
placed a grid light right in front of
that umbrella and aimed it at the pillows. Here the reason is to create highlights that are harder than
the umbrellas and this will show texture of the bed spread and so on. Notice the hard shadow on the
front of the night stand? I then placed another umbrella next to the camera to fill in the shadows of the
night 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 also
added a highlight to the edges of the paneled wall (red arrow). I had to feathered this light to keep
that wall from getting to hot and pointed it towards the bathroom door on the right. The grid adds texture and the fill maintains a good contrast.
Page 10
In PS I darkened the window because it looked quite good, used a dodge layer to lighten the front of
the night stand and smoothed out the carpet. Then corrected the angles, flattened the image, and did
one more curves adjustment layer for the best image as you can see here.
Page 11
We next moved on to the kitchen. This room also had the same contrast issues: dark floor and white
cabinets. Here again, I wanted a natural light feel supplemented with strobes. The first light we set up
was 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 hallway and pointed at the kitchen. Its power was set to look normal. I also set up two white umbrellas, on
far left of the camera and meant to hit the stools in the foreground and the other next to the camera to
fill the whole kitchen. I tested a few more times and found I still needed light on the floor where the
stools were, so I added a grid light on a floor stand and pointed it there. It was set at a power to just
lighten the area without looking lit.
Page 12
In PS, I opened the image and created a background copy, here called Layer 0 Copy. One way of burning and
dodging areas is to take that background copy and using curves, brighten it to the level you want for the dark
areas and here its the hallway and foreground floor. You apply a Hide All layer mask and then with a white
brush, you can paint in only the areas you want to lighten. I did this with layer and lightened the floor and hallway slightly. I then went into the lens correction tool and straightened the image. When I did this and cropped
it I was left with the choice of cropping into the cabinet on the right or painting that color in and leaving most
of the cabinet. I chose the latter. I created an empty layer, used the Color Picker to select the color of grey
right next to the gap and then painted over that area to fill it in. I saved my layered PSD file, flattened and delivered a TIFF to the client.
Page 13
We next moved to another house where the client

indicated the rooms they wanted shot. This is the living room and they originally wanted the whole room
shot and my camera would not go that wide. I could
have done a panoramic approach, but the client did
not realize that this would be very wide and narrow,
so they agreed to the couch and one side of the
shelving.
This first image shows the room with just window
light coming in. You can see that the rear of the
couch was quite bright from the window light and
that the cabinets were also a bit bright. I can control
the exposure on the cabinets by choosing a faster
shutter speed, but I did not want any light on the
back of the couch and I need the window light for
other parts of the scene. Our eyes are attracted to
the brightest spot in the scene and this was not
what I wanted to attract the viewers eyes.
Page 14
The first thing we set up was a black

sheet between two stands to block that
light from coming into the back of the
couch. I carry two in my grip case for exactly this purpose, blocking extraneous
light. You can see on the right that the
light is gone on the back of the couch.
Next, we placed an umbrella on the right
and pointed it at the coffee table. In
front of that umbrella was a grid light
and it was pointed at the couch. Look at
the shadows cast by the coffee table to
get an idea of light direction.
Why the grid and umbrella setup? This is
a great technique that is widely used in
all photography not just interiors. The
grid, slightly brighter than the umbrella
creates contrast and hard edge highlights. This shows texture. The umbrella
right behind the grid is much softer light
and acts like a fill light. This approach is
two lights but look like one soft yet contrasty light. My goal was to brighten the
couch, which was dark as seen in the
first image above.
Page 15
The next light was a fill at the camera and it was

used to mainly lighten this end of the couch but to
also affect the rest of the background. Since the sun
was coming through the window and hitting the
bookcase, I placed a grid on a stand and placed behind the couch and pointed it at the bookcase. I also
positioned it to hit the couch pillow tops a hair and
the couch. Note the shadow on the carpet? I then
bracketed shutter speeds during the exposure to
makes sure I had a great balance.
One problem I encountered was when I had the perfect placement of the lights; there was a hot sport
reflection in the picture in the upper left. So when I
had what I felt was my perfect base exposure I turn
off the strobes and shoot at a shutter speed that
gives me close to the same density as the strobed
exposures. Here you can see no reflection in the picture.
Page 16
Here is with strobes on and you

can see the hot spot.
I next opened my base exposure
in PS and then immediately drag
the no reflection layer on top,
indicated here as layer 1. You
can see the reflection in the picture. I added a layer mask filled
with black and painted the hot
spot out of the picture. At the
same time, since I had a brighter
picture on top of my base layer, I
went ahead and painted over the
shadow in front of the couch and
on the floor. This brighter layer
weakened the darkness of that
shadow nicely. I also dodged a
little of this end of the couch and
worked the black TV screen a little. The hue/saturation adjustment layer was used to bump up
the color of the cabinets a little
and then the curves layer corrected overall color
Page 17
Here is the final pic after lens correction

adjustments.

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Photography For Architecture and Real Estate