My Technique

For photos of the interior of a home I employ a technique using a combination of remote flash(es) and manually blending multiple photographs to achieve a pleasing and accurate rendition of the space, even in dark and challenging lighting conditions. This is in slight contrast to a technique of strictly using HDR (High Dynamic Range) software only, whereby multiple photos are taken at various exposures and sent through a piece of software to automatically blend them based on the brightness differences in each photo. In my opinion this technique has it’s flaws especially when the dynamic range of the scene is very wide and can also produce some not so pleasing color shifts and other harsh artifacts. Utilizing flashes bounced off of the ceiling or a white bounce card can really help to add a more color accurate and pleasing rendition of the space and really help to more acutely showcase the home as we see it with our eyes. I pride myself and put in the extra effort it takes through lighting and editing techniques to produce images that will show off the home in its best light. I especially excel at accurately and realistically showing off views from view homes from the interior living space.

The two big challenges in accurately and pleasingly photographing an interior space has to do with the inherent deficiencies in digital cameras or film for that matter as it compares to how our eyes see a scene. The two challenges are Dynamic Range and Color Balance. Dynamic Range is the range in brightness from darkest area to the brightest area present in any given room, this includes the light coming through any windows. Forgoing a too detailed explanation… The human eye is capable of discerning a range of brightness of approx. 24 stops or more of light as measured in camera terms. Some of the best digital camera on the market can only discern approx. 14 stops of light. Not to mention our eyes are constantly dynamically adjusting to the incoming light. It is feasible and common for it to be 30x brighter outside than inside. So in order to capture the immense range of brightness that can exist in certain scenes we need to employ some special lighting and or editing techniques to accommodate the range of light present. The other factor is Color Balance. Color Balance in camera terms refers to accurately capturing the color of a scene based on the lighting conditions. Different light sources have a different color to them. For instance the standard lightbulb that has been around for a long time that most of have in our homes are called tungsten bulbs or Edison bulbs, these have a yellow or orange color tint to them. By contrast, daylight that pours through the windows has a much whiter even bluer color in contrast. And then there is the new LED or CFL lights that can sometimes be in the middle of these two color wise. The problem that arrises is when there are two or more colors of light sources in the same scene. Our eyes have an amazing ability in real-time to adjust to these multiple colors of lights and even out the perceptible color differences. A camera by contrast does not have the ability to dynamically change or even out color differences from one part of the scene to another part of scene in real time. A camera needs to have a frame-of-reference for what color an object is supposed to be depending on the “color” of light falling on on that object. Basically a camera has to be told what “white” is in order for it to accurately figure out what the rest of colors should be. So when there are multiple colors of light in one scene and the camera can only pick one reference of what “white” is, some other areas of the photo may not have the “right” colors. Both of these challenges are overcome with my technique of shooting.