C+C My (first time shooting) Interiors - 11 Pics

Howdy par'dners ,


Ended up shooting a few interior shots of a local hotel this week. Wasn't particularly challenging light-wise, and I think I came out okay in the end, but I thought I'd throw a few of the shots in here and see what ye guys think.

To be honest, I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to be looking for when taking these photos. I quickly learned not to shoot at straight walls, because the photos look a little dull or flat or something doing that (whereas I felt that shooting towards corners, or including corners in the composition made for an ultimately nicer photograph).


A wider focal length would have been beneficial I'd say (17mm was as wide as I could go) but at the same time, interior shots aren't something I'd be doing much of, so I'm not gonna go rushing into a super wide lens anytime soon.


Anyway, I just thought I'd throw them in here and see what you guys think, be it good, bad, or indifferent.


1


2


3


4


5


6


7


8


9


10


11





Cheers

smelltheglove

Looks lovely, if I wasn't doing weddings this would be my second choice, I love decor and the place looks great. One thing if I was to say anything, it may beme and my dodgy eyes but do some of the shots need a little straightening? I like the 3rd and the 3rd last.

Great job anyway.

smelltheglove

smelltheglove wrote: »

Looks lovely, if I wasn't doing weddings this would be my second choice, I love decor and the place looks great. One thing if I was to say anything, it may beme and my dodgy eyes but do some of the shots need a little straightening? I like the 3rd and the 3rd last.

Great job anyway.

Cheers STG.

Tried straightening as much as I could, but the distortion of the 17mm angle is a bit odd, and I couldn't quite hammer it out properly. Unless I shot from a height that was exactly the halfway point from the roof to ceiling, the verticals were bending. Maybe I'm a bit clueless as to the correct processing methods to straighten my verticals, but I did notice that, alright.

smelltheglove

3 and 8, both of which I love stand out most to me as needing a bit of straightenng, with 3 I would be focusing on having the chair back straight and on 8 I would focus on the skirting board.

pete4130

They seem to open and wide and are more like lifestyle shots than interiors. The images are more trying to sell what your aiming for than what you get if that makes sense?

I've worked in real estate photography for a few years and shot the bread ad butter wide angle/bright lights/make a place look as good as possible shots. Sometimes I've been asked for catalogues and promotional brochures to shoot "lifestyle" shots which more or less come down to what I see as pretentious, consumerist/"look how much money I've got" shots.

I actually think you've REALLY got the jist of this sort of work down.

Your 1st shot I'd crop more. Theres too much space to show how much yo might be sharing with others. Tighter crops can lead to stronger compositions too. The colours are really clear and strong too, which I can't fault in any of the shots.

The 2nd shot is more a lifestyle shot and I thin would benefit more from a tighter crop/more shallow depth of field.

The 3rd shot doesn't really offer anything to the brief to be honest.

The 4th sot I think would work better with a longer, more straight on sot with shallow depth of field using the colours to work in your favour.

The 5th shot deffo needs a tighter crop to emphacise something rather than showing a bar. Everyones seen a bar, so show something that stands out, no matter how small. Make the clients notice.

The 6th is VERY much like the 1st and not really adding anything new.


The 7th and 8th just seem compositionally weak and a little overexposed and lack any mood to them.

The 9th needs to be darker/show more atmosphere because it looks clinically bright and boring. I woldnt like to stay somewhere like that tbh.

The 10th with the red cushions on the pillows probably needs a muc h tighter crop to show how delicate the beds can be and emphasise/indicate how comfortable they can .

The final image is just messy in my eyes. A chair, a bench, some drawers, a coffee mug, an open catalogue and some messy books in the lower left had side of the frame. You need to make sure the rooms are clean and tight/tidy before taking the picture. Thelast image would be so much more appealing if ALL the clutter was gone (coffee cup, TV, magazine, catalogues, tissues etc...) because those things DON'T sell a room in a photo. Even the chair being pulled out makes it look like the Marie Celeste and somebody leftin a hurry.

Beneath everything that might seem negative in what I've said, I do think you've really touched on what makes good interior/lifestyle shots.

The interior stuff I've worked on demands a totally different style of shooting. 90% of the time you always shoot towards the window with a -2,0,+2 exposure in ambient light, with an ambient plus flash and a flash (without ambient) all on a tripod so they can blend them all together, cut the window out of the ambient shots and splice in the window with the flash shot to combine an "perfect" exposure....so its like HDR with some cutting and pasting from other images on top.

I think you've gone the right route, you just need to have tighter crops to show more of the detail.

On a side note....I HATE working in real estate photography. It kills my desire to soot my own photos but it can pay really well if you can live with really formulaic shots for 8 hours a day.

Pivot_Al

Excellent- I think you should be proud of those shots- really good from both a technical and artistic perspective

Pete, that's a hugely insightful reply. Thank you very, very much for the individual critique. Very much appreciated.


Can I ask you though, if you were to define "Lifestyle photography" and "interior photography", how would you do it?

What is it you feel that separates the two (not trying to be a smart ass, just genuinely curious. Seems to be a very blurred line between the two?)

pete4130

Interior is just that really, showing the space of a room, how bright and how aesthetic it is to be in I suppose. Lifestyle shots are more focussing on the fittings, the furniture and the materialistic value of the contents of a room/home and the level of quality associated with it.

This pic below is from a property in Chelsea selling for about £1.5m. All the furniture was rented in the property purely to show how you could live if you owned the property. The furniture was probably worth about 10% of the value of the property if it was bought. It made the property look fantastic but in reality you were buying a bare, empty apartment rather than the extravagance the lifestyle shots portray.

thefly

pete4130 wrote: »

They seem to open and wide and are more like lifestyle shots than interiors. The images are more trying to sell what your aiming for than what you get if that makes sense?

I've worked in real estate photography for a few years and shot the bread ad butter wide angle/bright lights/make a place look as good as possible shots. Sometimes I've been asked for catalogues and promotional brochures to shoot "lifestyle" shots which more or less come down to what I see as pretentious, consumerist/"look how much money I've got" shots.

I actually think you've REALLY got the jist of this sort of work down.

Your 1st shot I'd crop more. Theres too much space to show how much yo might be sharing with others. Tighter crops can lead to stronger compositions too. The colours are really clear and strong too, which I can't fault in any of the shots.

The 2nd shot is more a lifestyle shot and I thin would benefit more from a tighter crop/more shallow depth of field.

The 3rd shot doesn't really offer anything to the brief to be honest.

The 4th sot I think would work better with a longer, more straight on sot with shallow depth of field using the colours to work in your favour.

The 5th shot deffo needs a tighter crop to emphacise something rather than showing a bar. Everyones seen a bar, so show something that stands out, no matter how small. Make the clients notice.

The 6th is VERY much like the 1st and not really adding anything new.


The 7th and 8th just seem compositionally weak and a little overexposed and lack any mood to them.

The 9th needs to be darker/show more atmosphere because it looks clinically bright and boring. I woldnt like to stay somewhere like that tbh.

The 10th with the red cushions on the pillows probably needs a muc h tighter crop to show how delicate the beds can be and emphasise/indicate how comfortable they can .

The final image is just messy in my eyes. A chair, a bench, some drawers, a coffee mug, an open catalogue and some messy books in the lower left had side of the frame. You need to make sure the rooms are clean and tight/tidy before taking the picture. Thelast image would be so much more appealing if ALL the clutter was gone (coffee cup, TV, magazine, catalogues, tissues etc...) because those things DON'T sell a room in a photo. Even the chair being pulled out makes it look like the Marie Celeste and somebody leftin a hurry.

Beneath everything that might seem negative in what I've said, I do think you've really touched on what makes good interior/lifestyle shots.

The interior stuff I've worked on demands a totally different style of shooting. 90% of the time you always shoot towards the window with a -2,0,+2 exposure in ambient light, with an ambient plus flash and a flash (without ambient) all on a tripod so they can blend them all together, cut the window out of the ambient shots and splice in the window with the flash shot to combine an "perfect" exposure....so its like HDR with some cutting and pasting from other images on top.

I think you've gone the right route, you just need to have tighter crops to show more of the detail.

On a side note....I HATE working in real estate photography. It kills my desire to soot my own photos but it can pay really well if you can live with really formulaic shots for 8 hours a day.

Great post