Barkly Street: GM Manchester

Barkly Street: Sims Supermarket

Barkly Street: Teds Cycles

Barkly Street: Jim Wong Restaurant

Barkly Street: Nick Ciancio Sewing Machines

Barkly Street: Vince Varris Fruit & Vegetables

Barkly Street: M&N Coopers Jewellery

M&N Coopers Jewellery

Barkly Street: T Cavallaros & Sons

T Cavallaro & Sons

Barkly Street: Royal Hotel

Royal Hotel

Yarraville Swim Centre

Yarraville Swim Centre

Real Estate Photography - Bounce Flash vs HDR

It's Easter and I’ve been working on some interior photography at home. I wanted to put into practice some of the techniques Scott Hargis’s Lighting Interiors e-book available from the Photography for Real Estate site. As well putting into practice some of Scott’s Techniques I also made a comparison of HDR versus using small flashes to photograph interiors.

Scott’s technique is to use a mix of bounced, bare bulb through a wide angle diffuser and umbrellas to modify his light. The first room I lit was a bedroom, using two flashes. The key light was a bounce flash at ¼ power above the camera on a wardrobe. A second fill flash bounced off the wardrobe was used to bring up the bed.

For the HDR shot, I switched the flashes off and took seven bracketed images from -3 to +3.

At first I preferred the HDR image using the Photomatrix Pro fusion auto processing option. However when I went back to the flash version turning up the Clarity slider it popped into life. The same went for the open plan living and dining room shot the next day. However, the ambient exposure was a bit tricky given the different levels of light into the two windows.

I balanced the key light on a door above the camera bouncing of the ceiling. I bounced the fill light off the wall opposite the stained glass window. I used a 43” shoot through umbrella to light the living room the right hand corner by the window.

After I took the shot I walked the shutter speed up and down to get the windows to pop and increased the aperture 1/3 of a stop to tone down the flash. This along with Scott's advice on using a 24mm (16mm crop) lens were some of the most useful tips I picked up from the book. The HDR exposure was interesting given the different level of natural light in the two rooms.

Overall I felt the flash images came out on top for both rooms over the HDR. The HDR image do bring a warmth to the images that the flash cannot. But in the business of Real Estate the clarity of the flash image probably wins out. With flash there is more control over the light, however it is so simple to make the HDR image after the flash exposure that it is worth doing as an alternative.

Headshots Sam Muscat MC

It's been a while since my last blog entry but I have not been completely idle on the photography front. Earlier this year I was trying to figure out how to light a sweep of wildflowers in the foreground of one of my West Gate bridge series. I figured out I would need some kind of off camera flash. But I was totally ignorant about how to go about lighting the scene until I stumbled across David Hobby's strobist.com blog.

What an eye opener. To cut a long story short, through Daves' blog I entered the wonderful world of strobism. Having being focussed on landscape and architectural photography I found my key for learning about portrait photography both on location and in the studio. Before long I found myself purchasing umbrellas, grids, radio triggers and additional flash units of eBay.

My first strobist brief was to create a series of black and white head-shots for Sam Muscat a local wedding and event MC. I approached this assignment by setting up a simple lighting plan of a key light shoot through umbrella at 45 degrees to the subject, and a piece of foamcore as a fill light.
To adds a bit of separation from the background, I turned a strobe with a grid on the background.

To add a touch of old Hollywood glamour to the shot I added a rim light.

Here's the final shot:

And here's the setup shot:

One of these days I'll get back to the West Gate and setup the lighting on the wild flowers...