Tips for Shooting Interiors Before/After Cleaning

Written by Posted On Thursday, 24 January 2019 00:16

When it comes to demonstrating your skills and professionalism, pictures speak a thousand words. They are the actual proof of all the work done and result achieved, and could work great for your business marketing, social media, and work portfolio

Getting good interior photos is difficult. You'd be amazed at how many real estate photographers go outside the basic guidelines of light and space because they just want to capture the space and move on. But learning a few essential things will help you to start getting good pictures.

1. Think About Light

When talking about lighting, the first thing to remember is that room should be looking naturally lit. Natural light is a priority for photographers because it makes you feel for what it would be like to see the space in person. The way the light comes into the room or illuminates it will change the feel of the place during the day, but it can also make it dark.

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Ideally, natural lighting will be enough, but if it’s not - start by turning on any lights inside or moving a few well-placed lamps to illuminate darker corners. You may also need to adjust the white balance so the image is colored correctly. Better not to use a flash unless you have no choice -  it creates harsh shadows and reflections.

Clean windows let in more light, so you'll want to open the curtains or move blinds to let in as much as possible. You'll be able to see a more dramatic difference in before and after photos of the lighting by opening curtains and having clean windows.

2. Create a Story

The fact is: all good real estate images are staged. The image needs to show an area that the viewer wants to put themselves into. You wouldn't want to clean up left behind rings from pet bowls, fix disorganized pillows, or clean up after someone has left groceries on the counter.

It's all about making the area seem lived in without actually having the signs of dirt and trash that come with real life. This means that after removing the clutter, try to craft the image by adding back generic looking personal items. Including touches like fruit bowls, fresh flowers, even having a plate of cookies out makes the house seem lived in without making it look messy. Less is definitely more - a before and after image will be the difference between walking into mid-morning chaos and a magazine worthy image.

3. In Camera

Your settings may change based on the type of camera you're using and your photographing skills. If you don’t feel very experience, it might be a good choice to just leave everything automatic.

Interior images are best done by using a wide lens with a larger aperture (f/1.2-f4.8) if you have a DSLR, and avoiding your ISO going too high to stop the image getting grainy. Most cell phones and point-and-shoot cameras do have white balance adjustment to adjust how the camera “sees” the light inside - so play with the settings and find one that is suitable.

To capture the light best you have to use the exposure triangle. This means balancing your ISO, Aperture, and Shutter speed so that your camera gets enough light. Slower shutter speed will give you better exposure and keep your ISO from getting too high and creating noise – it’s a particular problem with interior images because there's likely to be less usable light.

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4. Different Angles

If you don't have a DSLR with a wide lens, then you'll probably need to move around a bit so you can find the best angle. Look around and think of the places you can physically occupy and see what the perspective from each of them is like. If you can, try taking images from waist height to make a room bigger, or on the contrary, standing on a chair or ladder to see the room from above. Shoot as many pictures as you can and don’t look on every of it right after taking – you’ll have plenty of time to pick the good ones at home.

While taking photos, you want to be careful about cutting parts of the room off – like the floor, for example. Not being able to see the floor looks strange, so even if there's just a hint of the floor at the bottom it's enough to make it seem like a room. You can disregard this for close up images where you'll be cropping everything but the main feature out anyway.

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There are also certain photography rules which may help you choose the right angle – the rule of thirds, for example, might be quite helpful. To put it simply: imagine two horizontal and three vertical lines dividing your picture into nine equal parts. As the rule says, you should place important elements along these lines or their intersections instead of the middle –  this will draw the viewer's eye into the whole composition, instead of just focusing on the center. If you used a photo editor or digital viewfinder, you can probably imagine how it looks like:

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5. Focus on Close-Ups

Some things are always left unnoted from the perspective. It is hard to notice much efforts were put to make the room look the way it looks now – it’s not only about clean floor and windows, but also about paying attention to every part and object. So move closer and shoot specific close-ups like the couch/seating area, or room accents like a stove or fireplace, or tables and show how they looked before and after the work is done.

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Your close-ups will also need some different angles too, so again – don’t be afraid to take multiple images to compare. Don’t worry about the extensive details or space on the photo – for close-ups, you’ll definitely need to use the cropping tool to concentrate on the main subject out anyway. 

6. Editing the Image Correctly

The sad truth is that the images almost never come out exactly like you want them to. That’s because our eyes and a camera see the picture differently, so the chances that the picture on your screen will be just the way you saw it yourself are quite low. All you can do is to make sure that you have the right composition and a variety of shots to choose from, so you could keep the post-production part to a minimum.

Editing is essential for fixing the white balance, brightening dark areas, fixing the colors, and making an image come alive and look like anyone could fit themselves into the picture. Adjust the overall temperature to make the room look warm. Play with the sliders on color settings to make your photo look as natural as possible. Find and remove some spots or light anomalies, which you couldn’t see with your eye, but camera made it all show up. This general adjustment can be performed intuitively.

Let’s take a look at how to do this in Photoshop, for example. All these adjustments are pretty the same in all the editors, so no matter which one you use you’ll be able to do this. Here is the original picture:

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First, find the “Adjustments” option from your Image menu:

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You can try all the options you find there to see the way they change the picture. For this particular one, let's fix some exposure and make it a bit brighter:

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After that, try to adjust “Vibrance” settings to make the room look a little warmer:

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Remember: over-editing can be just as bad as not editing at all. You still want the image to look believable so try to keep editing to a minimum for light and color adjustment. Your before and after images should be a comparison from a dark, messy and unwelcoming to warm-toned, well-lit, and organized to make the viewer want to picture themselves in that new space. Here is what we have after making some minor changes:

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Other options you can use are photo filters and presets. For example, let see how you can change the picture using one of the Luminar color editor filter called “Fix Dark Photos”. Just adjust the amount of filter you're about to apply and see the result:

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Interior photography can be challenging, however, with technology today you can take a smartphone photo and use a photo editing program to fix it and still get awesome results.

There are a lot more real estate photography tips to learn, but these few basics can help you to get started. Happy photo taking! 

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