Interior Photography Overview

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Stephanie Davis. I'm a commercial photographer, interior designer, and content creator. My work aims to elevate the work designs or products of others to look their best. I translate imagery and video into digital content that helps sell products and services for people. This is part one of the full course, which deals with everything before and during the shoot. Part two is all about selecting and editing your shots so they are the most polished version of your work you can create. You will need a DSLR camera, a tripod, and a strobe or speed light on camera flashes will not help you. Additional light modification accessories like umbrellas, soft boxes, and reflectors will be used as well. You will also need a working knowledge of editing software. For this course, I will be using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. 2. 1 setting up the shot: Most likely your purpose for photographing and interior space will be to capture it, looking. It's best to show off someone's work on that space or to help someone envision themselves in that space. Depending on your purpose, you will most likely wanna do this with some amount of furniture and accessories. Objects will function as a point of reference for the viewer so they can associate with that interior and what it's like to interact in it. Your photograph helps the viewer mentally put themselves in that room just by looking at it. The objects shown in it will help or hurt that experience for the viewer. So choose wisely and with intent the things that are included or excluded from your shot. It goes without saying but include furniture that makes logical sense in the area to be photographed. Anchor pieces like bed sofas, chairs, and various types of tables will help create the impression of the logical use there. Who is responsible for this part of the process can vary from the home or business owner, the designer, architect, a staging company, etc. Hopefully as a photographer, this won't be your problem to deal with, but it is nice to have some say in moving pieces around if it's necessary and acceptable to the end client of the photos. Anchor furniture alone will still leave you with a barren looking space. So fill it with accessories and decorative items, real or fake plants in nice containers are an attractive way to breathe new life in Philadelphia corner. Textiles offered texture and layers for existing furniture. Try this in the form of pillows, throw blankets, a jacket on the coat rack or casually thrown over an armchair. A rug will help eliminate dead floor space that might end up looking bigger than it really is in the photo. A rug will also add texture, visual interests and warmth to the composition. Feel shelves with sections are stacks of books. A completely full shelf isn't needed to create the look of a well-used entertainment center or office. Having some breathing room between books and stacks of decorative objects is a good thing, will help quickly fill up a set of empty shelves. The kitchen can easily be accessorized with colorful fresh food, flowers, a bottle of wine, glassware and cooking utensils. Just stage a culinary seen. A boring bathroom vanity can look perk year with different size towels, robes, plants, decorative items, and personal care products, as long as they have nice packaging. The point is to fill the void, create balance with your selected objects and stages seen that looks lived in. The same applies for commercial or institutional spaces. Create a sense of it being occupied by the intended user. Stay away from creating clutter with too many items calling out for attention all at once. And steer away from overstated objects that look stiff. Some of the best staging together with interior photography, creates the sense that someone was just there in the room and then stepped away before the shop is taken. If you want to be in control of the stage and phase of your projects, you will need to source the materials. There are stage and companies available that will take care of all of these details for you, including delivery, setup and taking everything down if it's available in the budget, this may be the easiest option. Home fashion off-price retailers can offer an ever-changing and wide variety of accessories and even small furniture items at lower than regular retail price. Thrift stores can sometimes offer appealing and well-worn accessories. But were they really shine is as a source of books. The content of the books typically doesn't matter since they won't be the primary focus of the shot ends there available often for cents or dollars each at thrift stores. This is much lower than what would be sourced for books at any other retailer. Look for hardcovers and take a look at what's under the book jacket when thinking about outfitting your space, maybe you want to have a variety of colors, or maybe you need dark monochrome book spines on the shelf. Choose whatever you think will best support your look. The item is used for staging or the icing, not the cake. They're only tools, not the main point. So don't get carried away. Please don't overdo it with furniture and accessories. If the client already has a lot of things in the room, consider what should be removed for the benefit of the final photograph. What is a flaw? Might be subjective, but here's what I think should be omitted from a scene because it won't contribute much to the final photograph. Chords, cables, wiring, window treatment pools can all be tucked behind something or at the very least taped down to the floor or wall to be removed easier while editing later. Identifying personal items like family photos, not if they're small and out of the way, but if a family collage dominates a wall, consider taking that down and replacing it with a single large framed art piece instead. Additionally, things like monogrammed or named personal items, magazines and product labels with a lot of texts draw unnecessary attention away from the point of the shot, which is the space. Any clashing colors that don't make sense in the color palette of the Interior should also be removed. I understand if the client is a die-hard sports fan, but the team colored blanket or other memorabilia will not help the room look its best in a styled photograph. Small appliances are most popular in kitchens and baths, but look out for these and other spaces to it doesn't matter how the kitchen is literally used day-to-day. The purpose here is to cure rate and compose a space so it looks its best. And a toaster and blender or whatever Jeff Foster contraption will take away from the materials used, or even possibly the architecture of the space. Less is more with countertop appliances, if it makes sense in your particular situation, do away with all of them. 3. 2 lighting: Natural light is your friend, but diffusion is key. It's a beautiful thing to have natural light work with you during a shoot when the building and the landscaping are situated just right and the weather is consistent all through the day. You might even get away with using only natural light to photograph your space. If this is the case, absolutely take advantage of it, but most likely this won't be the case and you can't control the weather. Natural light is most offensive in the form of hot-spots. Depending on the time of day in the ever-changing, whether you might find sunlight pouring in through a window and leaving an intense hot spot of light just where you don't want it. I do understand that sometimes hotspots are not seen as a flaw. They're actually embraced by some interior photographers. Great, love the look, go for it, but at least make sure it's intentional if that hotspot is cutting through your kitchen island or some beautiful architectural feature in an unattractive way. Let's find ways to avoid that time of day or fix it in post if it's possible. You can also hanging diffusion screen outside of the window where the harsh light is coming in from. If it's cloudy, wait for some cloud cover before taking the shot. Maybe do both. Wherever the sun is not illuminating, use phyllite. You will need a speed later strobe. You could even get away with using a continuous light source if that's what you have available to you. The fixture itself is not as important as how you use it. Direct the light source into the ceiling or if available, a clear wall opposite the area that you're photographing, play with the intensity and the angle of the light. There's no exact formula for this because every space and lighting situation will be different. It's up to you to get to know what your tools can do. So you can gain a sense of how they will help you in each unique situation. But generally speaking, your aim and your light source into the ceiling or a clear wall in order to produce diffused bounce light back into the space to be photographed. This creates softer lighting, which is what you want. Avoid directing light source directly into the space because it will create intense highlights, harsh shadows and glare. Also avoid bouncing light off of a colored wall because you will in turn Bounce that walls color back into the room and it will tint the whole scene in a way that you don't want. This brings me to the topic of diffusion. Diffuse your light as much as possible aside from bouncing light off of the ceiling or wall, use an umbrella or softbox. And you can even pair it with an added diffusion screen or reflector if needed. The further from the light source the diffusion material is placed, the softer the light. Play around with these distances using what you have available, get acquainted with what your tools can do. These techniques for softening light will create a look that has an ambient glow where it's nice and bright, but you can't pinpoint exactly where the light source is coming from. The flip side to using an artificial light source like a stroke or speed light, is that they have the tendency to create harsh shadows depending on the angle and the architectural features. Seeing harsh shadows in your finished work is a dead giveaway that you used an intense light source. This breaks the fourth wall and ruins the illusion of the bright and light beautiful space you're trying to create. We want to hide the metaphorical strings being pulled to create the final image. To help hide this position, your light source more so directly opposite of the architectural features like columns or beams that will cast a harsh shadow. If that's not working, maybe the space doesn't lend itself for that. Take the same shot three times, one with no added lights to function as a baseline with the light source into different positions so they can be composited together in the editing phase. Sometimes no matter where you place your light, you're bound to get glare or reflections. Use a hood on your lens to avoid glare coming in. Sometimes these aren't enough. So grab a mat material and position it next to your lens just outside of its field division. I like to use this matt black's and a foil because it can be molded in tape just where you need it. But anything from your hand to clipboard or even a piece of paper will help you cut out glare from coming into your lens. Sometimes it's glare from a picture on the wall bouncing back unsightly light, use a small lot of gaffe or masking tape behind the frame just suddenly change its angle as long as it's not obvious and wonky looking in your final shot, like with the hotspot trick, setting up a white diffusion or matte black screen near the problem area could be the answer to avoid the wrong thing from reflecting back. The existing light fixtures in the room can be turned on or off. That is going to be your stylistic call. Sometimes interior designers and real estate agents find it a flaw if the recess cans and decorative light fixtures in the room or not on, sometimes a commercial client won't care or sees it as a distraction if they are on. Personally, I think it's nice to have a soft, warm glow coming from installed light fixtures in the room. But sometimes they clash with the look of the whole thing. Do some tests on your own, shoot both ways and determine if you like the look or not or if a specific space needs the extra little sparkle of a fixture turned on. For practical editing purposes, you should shoot with the fixtures on and off and then bring those images together when editing, do this on a tripod and don't move the camera. A ceiling or wall light will typically cast its glow and reflection on to the surrounding surfaces, which can look unsightly, compositing the multiple shots with it on and off. We'll let you use only the nice glow and none of the glare or reflections when it's time to work in Photoshop, this lets you pick and choose the good parts and none of the body. 4. 3 camera settings: Shoot tethered if possible. So you can see in better detail what you're working with. Shooting tethered reverse to connecting your camera to your laptop and photo editing software. Check your cameras specs for the proper tether cable needed. Connect the camera to the laptop open Adobe Lightroom, go to File, tethered capture and start to either capture, select, and name your file path. You should see the connection in a few moments. Now as your shoot and make those decisions about composition and what to leave out of the frame. You'll be able to see in much better detail than only your cameras monitor. This is a wonderful useful tool and will lead to better decision-making for you. In most scenarios, you'll have natural light coming in through the windows and some sorts of artificial light together in one image. Unfortunately, the camera technology isn't there yet. $0.02 differences in white balance and Kelvin temperatures and compensate for all. The solution is to set the white balance for the predominate and color temperature in the room and correct for the rest, don't use the auto white balance feature. This will cause each photo to be slightly different, which will become an editing nightmare for you later on. Save yourself the headache and keep things consistent. Make that white balanced decision before you start composing and shooting. There are several white balance tools available in the market to help you get close to accurate results. On the low tech side of the spectrum is a gray card. This is a neutral mid value grey, non-reflective material that you will place in the same light as your subject and snap a quick photo of you. Then use that reference photo to tell your camera what to set the balance to look up your specific camera settings for how to assign a custom white balance from a reference photo. Next is the white balance filter. This is placed directly over the lens. When snapping your quick reference photo. It causes all of the light and color in the scene to come together. So you can use that as the reference photo, just like with the gray card. Use it to tell your camera what to set the custom white balance to. Handheld meters or mobile device apps are another option. They work by using a sensor or camera to get a reading of the color and light levels and then tell you what you should set your white balance to. These can sometimes be costly and may have a learning curve, but will give you good results. Because an interior space has more going on to it than just one simple focal point. It's necessary to shoot with an aperture around F ten. This will allow a larger range of depth to be sharp in your image unless you're really honing in on a small detail, in which case something below five or four, maybe more appropriate if there's ample light, particularly if you're using strobe lights, bring the ISO as low as possible. If the situation allows for it. It's good to avoid any grain. If visual grain is a stylistic choice, it can always be added on later, but at least your original photos will be smooth and tack sharp. This leaves exposure as the variable to play with. But if using strobe lights, the exposure will need to stay low enough to not cause a sync speed issue. If you have a camera with a focal plane shutter, check your cameras specs to find out what the sync speed is. But generally it's around 1 200th of a second. Exposure. Bracketing is a technique where you take three or more different exposures of the same image. There is a middle exposure, which is the whole scene exposed correctly. There's a higher exposure, typically two stops overexposed and its opposite, a lower exposure, typically two stops underexposed. Of course, these are taken with a camera on a tripod and without any adjustments between shots other than the exposure. Most digital DSLR cameras will have the option to automatically do this for you. Check your cameras specs to find out how to turn this feature on. One caveat is that this feature to usually puts the camera in an auto exposure priority mode, which might skew other settings you want to intentionally set. Still though, I encourage you to experiment with this camera to feature and see for yourself how it works for you. Personally, I prefer to change the exposure to be under middle and over manually so I can remain in control of all of my settings. Which lends to use depends entirely on the type of shot you're going for. A wide shot where we see an entire room or whole building will need something around 24 millimeters or wider. A feature shots such as a section of a room or piece of furniture, can be done with something around 35 to 50 millimeter and a detail we'll need something like 50 millimeter or larger in size. Tilt shift lenses are great for manipulating the distortion and focal plane of the image. As the name suggests, a tilt shift lens lets you tilt and shift the barrel vertically or horizontally. If you can imagine the focal plane on a regular lens being straight up and down. The tilt shift lens lets you tilt the plane this way and that way by adjusting the dials. Now you're able to have things in the foreground and the background be in-focus. This feature also lets you decrease the effect of vertical line warp. It may not entirely eliminate the warp, but it does help buffer it and give you less to fix and post. 5. 4 compositions: The height at which you place your camera or viewing height will determine the perspective of the shot. High and low angles offer different feelings for the viewer. A high angle, that's a lot to be seen and it's most appropriate for large, wide-open space. Low angles can be more intimate and our wonderful for shooting precise and tight spots. For example, a coffee table and seating area look good, captured from a low angle because it helps the viewer empathize with being in that seating arrangement themselves, while also cutting out the visual clutter from everything else in the room and even the rooms beyond. It helps Omid extra visual information that's not important to the detailed shot. We're going for a high angle for a tight scene might lose the intent. And a low angle for a large scene will lose the visual information and perspective to take in the whole scene. Then there's the happy medium, the eye level. For the majority of my interior photos, I start out with the camera lens at about eye level, which is five foot, 2.55 feet, and then adjust it from there. This height will feel most normal to viewers. At this height, the vertical lines in the room will mostly be vertical. There will still be some lens distortion with the wide lenses and the height of the space will also affect this. But for the most part, I level helps you keep your verticals nice and vertical. The principles of interior design or a guiding force behind creative decision-making and problem-solving for interiors. They also help as a guiding source of inspiration when creating a pleasing interior photograph, there is a lot to cover in the basic design principles. So consider looking further into these on your own, but I will quickly go over them in this section. Color, pattern, and texture have their own visual weight. Balance is about creating a pleasing distribution or equilibrium with that visual weight. Symmetry and balanced asymmetry or two examples. Rhythm creates repeating patterns for visual interests. Rhythm helps move the viewers eye around the composition because it creates an element of movement. Some examples are repetition, gradation, and transition, harmony and unity create a sense of rest, fullness. It works by having a unifying factor through the visual fields so things feel like they fit together. For example, a reoccurring shape, texture, or color would help unify a composition. I like to think of emphasis as the focal point, although all the emphasis doesn't have to go toward the main focal point. Secondary focal points can be created with the right emphasis, which will guide the viewer's eye around where you want it. Contrast adds visual space. This is somewhat like emphasis in that something is highlighted, but it's different in that contrast offers opposition to the elements around it. Not just to highlight. And contrast doesn't have to be the focal point. For example, if you're working with an all white kitchen, some dark or high Chrome accessories will help add contrast, but they might not necessarily be the focal point. Proportion is the ratio between the size of something and the parts within it. Scale refers to the size of an object and the space that is placed in. Of course, when shooting interiors, the size of that space is there. But what you can control is how you frame up your scene. For example, you could dirty up the shot with a chair in the foreground or show some part of a doorway. But make the mistake of making those elements look huge in proportion and scale to the rest of the composition. In that example, the foreground element would take over in proportion to the parts of the image that we care about. Good proportion references to think about when framing a shot, or the golden ratio or the rule of thirds. Creating diagonal lines in your composition creates interest. Diagonal lines add depth field dynamic, and help guide the viewer's eye through the composition by pointing towards something. The most obvious source of diagonal lines might be deleting lines of the room form where the floor and the ceiling meet the walls. But there is a never ending combination of ways you can find diagonal patterns and a space. Kissing tangents is a term I use to refer to the edges of objects or planes at different depths that come together to line. This is not a pleasant alignment because when the edges of these things come together, they create a continuity that doesn't let the eye or brain feel like one of the objects is ended and the other has begun. They create unrest, confusion and decrease the sense of depth in the image. In essence, it's a visual distraction that should be avoided. Unless of course, what you want to create is on rest confusion and a decreased sense of depth. In that case, go for it. But again, it's about intent and knowing the tools in order to create diagonal lines and avoid kissing tangents or layering of forms in your composition will become one clear way to create further interests and solve both of those problems. This means shifting objects around ever so slightly in your interior or moving the position or height of your camera. But typically these movements will be smaller in order to create pleasant alignments and still keep with the overall of the composition. Deciding where to crop in the composition is a practice in deciding how much of the story you want to tell. Sometimes you're left with barely a slice of something at the edge of the frame. It's complete removal changes the whole dynamic of the photo. The question is, you let the viewer know that the element continues on or do you omit it entirely? This depends on if that slice, if something is more of a distraction than something portraying useful information to help the viewer make sense of the space. 6. 5 creativity: As a final point, I'd like to talk about intuitive, creative decisions. Why one shot and not the other? Sometimes this question can be answered with exact logical, rational thought. This is where coming in contact with your intuitive creative nature comes into play. An important way to do this is just simply practice photography a lot and often everywhere you go if you can. I'm sorry. If this isn't a terribly concrete or satisfying answer. But I do want to guide you toward a path of internal creative exploration. Look into authors or content creators that share their knowledge and guidance about these topics, like intuitive creativity, watched documentaries, or read books about your favorite photographers or artists and other media. These practices are not meant to be for the purpose of copying someone else's work or technique. But about gaining insight into the internal process of others and making connections, I strongly believe that having a wide range of interests and knowledge helps a person make unique connections, which in turn lead to interesting creative decisions and problem-solving. 7. 6 outro: Thank you for joining me on this journey into interior photography. I truly hope this knowledge is useful and offers you specific techniques and know-how. But also lets you think in new ways about your photo shoots so you can experiment on your own. Please feel free to reach out if you have any additional questions or requests for future courses.