You can’t escape the huge number of incredible photos of business interiors floating around on the web. Whether you see them on Instagram, Pinterest, Google Images, or any number of business websites. You may think that many of these seem completely out of reach, in terms of the perfect environments they show. In addition, the quality of the photos themselves can also feel unattainable to mere-mortal photographers. The simple fact is that many of the techniques and practices of great interior photographers are well within our grasp. In this article, I will look at how you can apply some simple methods to help elevate the photos you take of your business’s interior.
Try switching off the lights
You may have a specific desire to feature interior lighting in your photos. For example, you might run a restaurant, which has architectural lighting that is an integral part of the room’s design and ambiance. If this is the case you would be foolish not to show this in your business interior photos. But you should be careful to balance the colour temperature of different lighting with gels or during post-production.
On the other hand, if your lighting is more functional, it could give you more problems than benefits. For example, recessed downlights can give you very uneven lighting. A combination of ceiling and wall lighting can cast multiple shadows. Meanwhile, a mixture of tungsten, fluorescent, and LED lighting can give you a rainbow of different colour casts within a space. Your eyesight is smart enough to compensate for these inconsistencies to the point that you hardly notice. However, a camera records what is there, warts and all. If you need to use artificial lighting in a darker space, you should introduce this in a controlled way. Use softboxes or scrims to create soft, even, wraparound lighting, with consistent colour. If enough natural light enters the space through windows, this is probably your best starting point. You can always add daylight-balanced lighting to fill out shadows.
Shoot in raw when taking photos of your business interior
I never understood why so many photographers insist on a complete JPEG workflow. OK, it’s generally quicker than shooting in raw, because there is only one stage of editing/post-processing. Also files are much smaller. However, JPEG file compression throws away a lot of image information. This means that you’re losing much of the latitude you have for controlling exposure and colour balance. Processing raw files with software such as Adobe Lightroom gives you so much more scope. You can lift shadows, bring back highlights, and apply filters, either globally or locally more easily than working with JPEGs. I’d advise any photographer, who doesn’t work in a completely controlled environment, i.e., a studio, to develop a raw workflow.
Using layers to compensate for inconsistent lighting
Using layers in post-production can have a number of benefits. For a start it’s one of the ways that you can balance out zones of differing colour temperature caused by interior lighting. By carefully erasing and blending colour corrected layers, a uniform colour temperature can be created across the whole image. Layers are also a good way of unifying exposure between areas of very different brightness: use bracketed exposure and then carefully erase and blend brighter and darker areas to create a more uniform result. This is a more natural way of achieving an unnoticed, rather than obvious, HDR image than using in-camera HDR or a Photoshop plugin. In both cases, remember to use feathered brushes that are an appropriate size and don’t rush. A graphics tablet may be a useful addition to your editing hardware for this sort of work. This can be a long process and sometimes difficult to get right. However, with practice, working in this way gives you a far more controlled image than trying to automate the process.
Decidedly dodgy
Another technique that can be used very effectively to manage exposure across an image is to use dodge and burn tools. These will allow quite a surgical approach to balancing exposure, but make no mistake, they cannot bring back information that isn’t there, so if you’re not careful overexposed or burned out areas can take on a nasty grey hue if over-burned, while all sorts of grainy artifacts can appear from deep shadows if they are over-dodged. Use this technique in conjunction with layers for a higher quality result.
Design is everything
When shooting photos of your business interior, it’s very tempting to grab the widest lens you have so that you can take in the broadest vista possible. However, this is rarely a good decision from an image design point of view. You will probably end up showing an unnatural and difficult to interpret scene. Much of the really interesting stuff you want to show will get lost as tiny details. At the same time, much of the really dull stuff, like plain white ceilings and plain carpeted floors, will take up a lot of your frame. This is also a sure-fire way to get all sorts of lens distortions creeping in.
It’s much better to view the room from different points. You should consider basic design elements like shape, line, movement, rhythm, symmetry, and depth. You can then use these to create an engaging image. Later, in post-production, use the same techniques described above, along with techniques like selective saturation and sharpening. These will alow you to emphasise particular shapes or colours within your design. If there is a particular element that you want to showcase within a shot, try creating light paths or using vignettes to draw the viewer’s eye. All of these things take a little practice, but used with care, each adds subtly to the overall visual impact of your image and will soon become second nature.
The delight is in the detail
Don’t just be tempted to shoot big. In addition to showcasing the larger elements of a space, explore the smaller features, nooks and crannies, and oddities that are lost in wider shots. They often help to tell the story of an environment and to provide a little intrigue for the viewer. Treat your assignment like you are a young child exploring a place for the first time, bringing a little magic to the shoot.
Very basic stuff
If you’re working on an interior photo, or any image for that matter, make sure that everything that needs to be sharp, is sharp! Don’t, for example, simply open up your lens or ramp up the camera sensitivity to compensate for low light; use a tripod and a longer exposure in order to manage the least problematic parameter of your exposure. Take the trouble to shoot a grey card so that you have a reference point for colour balance later; I’m always surprised at how many photographers would rather spend ten minutes fighting with colour in post than 1/250th of a second shooting a grey card.
Make sure you declutter the space you’re shooting in to get rid of any elements that are a distraction within your shot. Again, taking the time to remove a vase, chair, table, or piece of wall art that isn’t doing your composition any favours is massively quicker than having to clone them out afterward. Chances are that you will be shooting out of hours, so there is no reason to avoid a little tidy-up before a shoot. By the same token, you may want to introduce elements into a frame that won’t naturally be there, adding a little interest or balancing up something on the other side of your frame.
Broaden your vision
While tilting and pivoting on camera screens and live view mode can enable us to see what is going on quite effectively, even if our camera is in an awkward position or pointing at an unusual angle, I still find it useful to connect a larger screen via HDMI or USB. Depending upon the circumstances of the shoot, this might be a 7″ field monitor or my laptop. I just find that this really helps me to get into the composition of the image far more than a tiny camera screen. If you are working with someone else with who you may need to discuss the compositions as you shoot, having a larger image to view is also very advantageous. Most field monitors also have focus peaking built into them, so you can check critical focus as you work.
Work with a shopping list
Before you start shooting, take a little time to explore the space you’re photographing before you begin and note down items of interest, things to avoid, potential lighting issues, and so on. You wouldn’t visit the supermarket without a clue of what you wanted to buy and the same applies here. Even if you’re working in a familiar environment, take a little time to explore it during downtime, so that you can see it clear of distractions.
Conclusion
Creating great interior photographs, like many other areas of photography, is just as much about applying a little straightforward know-how, as it is about art. OK, it takes practice, but if you run through a simple checklist every time you turn on your camera, the items on that checklist soon embed themselves. Over time, you assimilate the ideas discussed above into your working practices on an almost subconscious level, so it may appear like you have some mystical innate talent, but in reality you’re simply applying the tricks of the trade.
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