Estate Agent Photography

Friday saw me in Kirriemuir photographing a show home for a housing developer, it was actually for one of my Graphic designer clients - probably the only job I'll be doing in the near future for the property industry.

The house was quite large and I had a pretty good brief from the designer as to what they wanted, even a few snap shots to show what was important. No outdoor shots were needed which was just as well as the weather was terrible - however, this can bring its own problems, especially when the shots include windows. It's not just that rain and dark skies can be seen through the glass, it's not even that the building site and workers vans can be seen in the road. No, it's all about balancing ambient and artificial light! To show the rooms at their best they need to be nice and bright, this needs lots of artificial light, however this normally ends up being brighter than the light outside, especially on dark days, this difference normally makes the glass look even darker than usual. On a sunny day it is better as the difference between the light in and out is less.

So, I started in the living room.

The difference between inside and out is just about right here, this window faced what sun there was - the back window was more difficult.  Just for anyone that is interested, I took 2 Bowens esprit flash lights with me, I actually own 4 of these and I wish I had taken all 4 - reasons for that later. I used the ceiling as a large softbox by bouncing the light off it, this makes it less harsh and reduces shadows. I did have softboxes with me but they are quite large and they take up a fair bit of space in the room.  The shot above had a flash bounced to the ceiling at camera right and another one on low power hidden in the opposite corner behind the settee.

Another issue with home photography is again linked to balancing light. The shot above was to show the door styles, it is taken from the living room to the hall. The living room was lit to the right level but the hallway was not so I had to flash that too. I fitted a radio trigger to the flash in the hallway and checked the levels. There is a trend towards using small camera mounted flash guns but using them off camera. I have been thinking very hard about investing in this technology and for houses like this where space is limited I wish I had bought some. This is where I wish I had brought more flash units with me, I really wanted to open the other door you can see in the hall, it goes to the kitchen and the units are clearly seen. However, I didn't have another flash gun so the kitchen would have been dark, as a result I had to keep the door closed.

 

This is the kitchen (Obviously) lit by 1 flash strobe bounced to the ceiling behind camera right. The other flash was in the dining room which is the door on the left to bring the light in that room up to the same level.

 

These 2 shots shows the difference, on the top one there was no light upstairs so the stairs seem to go to shadow, for the second shot I lit the upstairs with a flash unit, there is quite a difference. The problem is that only having 2 lights meant that I had to take one from the living room! Of course, no one would ever notice this - and why should they. People hire professionals to produce good quality shots and you'd not expect anything less, even though I spent 20 mins getting the light levels right, the client wont even notice - thats fine with me.




Again, before and after shots. I wanted to leave the door to the vestibule open but again it was too dark. My flash unit was too large to be hidden, even with the door shut the flash was obvious through the glass. I had thought of opening the front door (which is to the right hand side) and putting a flash outside shining in but the power cord had to run through the vestibule. I had a think and tried my small battery flash gun on slave, after a bit of mucking about it worked fine. I decided eventually to shut the door as I felt it looked better.

So, next time you look at a photograph of a house in a brochure have a think, it's not as easy as it looks.