I'm slowly trying to expand my portfolio and get a feel for what direction I want to go with my photography. So, I've decided to try my hand or lens at Architecture and Interior Design photography. It turns out it's much harder than it looks. I would say it's the hardest type of photography I've done thus far. Sure, it's easy to just take the photo and you'll see a lot of photos of interior on Real Estate listings. But it is definitely difficult to capture a photo that expresses the feeling of the space and style. These scenes generally have a large dynamic range which is also hard to capture. Some of the most popular photos on DT are interiors. The below are very good examples of what I am saying.
Here are a few steps I figure out to do good interior photography which I would like to share with you.1) Tidy up the space. This is probably the most tiring part. Removing distracting objects (colours that don't match), dusting, arranging pillows, making sure there is no artwork hanging on the walls, etc) So a good time to take these photos is after you where going to do this anyway. Good incentive to clean up your house finally. ;)
2) Make sure you have good lighting. People in the interior design area would say the first thing to design a room is to design the lighting. So make sure the lamps, pot lightings, etc. are on to give the room a dynamic lighting look. Each light source will add more depth and dimension to your photo compared to just your on board flash.
3) Find an angle that best shows the size and elements of the space. This may mean shooting from above if the flooring or area rug is important in the scene or shooting from a low angle if you want to emphasize the height of the room.
4) Once everything is clean and tidy, the lighting is ideal, and you've found the best angle. Now it's time to finally take the picture. First of all the aperture will generally be small, F9 or smaller. So use a tripod. Now since the dynamic range of the scene is very high because of pot lights and lamps, make sure you take multiple exposures so you can do an HDR edit afterwards. I won't be going into how to do and HDR edit. But a search online or even in the forums here, you'll find out how to do this easily.
And there you have it. My probably over simplified steps in taking interior photos. I hope you'll find this useful. Here are the first photos that I have uploaded onto DT.
