Real Estate Photography – photography for house builders - scotland
A fair bit of my commercial work at the moment is photographing show homes for property developers, these range from large multi national companies to small builders working locally.
Today I was photographing the show home for a local builder, it was a beautiful home and I wish I could afford it!
There are some key things to consider when photographing houses, the idea is not to fill the room with flash, rather use small flashes placed strategically round the room to fill in the gaps. The big problem areas are where window light meets room light, not only is this where you get shadows but also the colour temperature is different. The idea is to flatten the light so that the shadows are minimised and the colour is balanced.
Here I was attracted to the reflection of the window light on the surface, the dark area was to camera left so a speedlight with a lumiquest 20cm softbox was placed there to fill that in. I tend to shoot tethered with my camera linked to the laptop by wireless link, while I shoot in RAW I also generate a small jpeg that is sent to the laptop in about 2 seconds, this pops up in photoshop and I can see the histogram right away to determine if I need to alter the light.
This was a problem room, all the light was coming in from the windows which caused a shadow behinds the sofa, it was a big shadow! I used a bowens espri digital to fill that area in and balanced the output to the ambient light. I wanted to match the light here so that the windows did not blow out. With hindsight, given the fact this is still a building site I maybe should have let the windows blow out a little.
My larger clients use a specialist company to dress the showhomes for them, their agenda is to make the rooms look much bigger than they are which tends to include lots of reflective surfaces. This can be a nightmare for a photographer as hiding yourself and your gear is difficult.
This shot shows where a sense of balance comes in, there was a dark shadow behind the sofa created by the window light, I used a flash to kill that off but had I gone further the shot would have looked unnatural so I powered down the flash to let a little shadow come out. I also put a flash outside the door and left the door open to make it look like the hall was very bright.
Stairwells can be difficult as you need to balance the light upstairs with the light downstairs, this shot contains 4 different flash units, can you see them?
It’s very important to let the ambient light come through and I select an exposure that is based round the ambient values and use flash only to balance the shadow areas out. Ambient is always the key light, the difficulty comes when the room ambient meets the window ambient. 
If you have any questions about this type of photography please don't hesitate to get in touch with me. If you are a property developer with a requirement for this type of imagery then I’d be delighted to help you.
www.amforbes.com
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