dinning-roomWe’ve all seen those adverts where an estate agents manages to make a cardboard box apartment look like the penthouse suite of a five star hotel. The art is in the photography.

 

Interior photography can be a bit tricky because lighting is an issue and if your outside lighting is very different from your inside lighting this will cause problems in the image.

Here are some great guidelines to get you photographing like a pro!guest-bathroom

~Lighting
Use the natural lighting as much as possible. Turn on the lights in the room / building. The existing lights are most likely well placed and will compliment the mood of the interior.

~Time of Day
Sometimes it is better to photograph an interior in the late afternoon so that the interior and exterior light are the same intensity. This will save your from having over-blown highlights in the windows of your interior.

~ISO
Use a low ISO, grain will be very evident in the smooth architecture of an interior and is definitely something you want to avoid.

~Long exposure
Long exposure is great for interiors as most of the time your photograph is of a ‘still’ scene. This allows you to let enough light in without pushing ISO or using any additional interfering light.

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~White Balance
Be careful of interiors that have a number of different light sources of different colour and intensity. Set your white balance manually if this is the case.

~Level
Make sure that your camera is completely level. Unless you are being creatively skew an un-level camera will really damage the quality of your shot.

~Wide Angle
If you have a wide angle lens – this is the perfect time to use it! If you don’t have a wide angle lens, make use of the ability to stitch images together. Use a tripod and take two images of the room and stitch them to create your own panoramic / wide angle shot of the interior.

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~High Dynamic Range
Interior photography is a great time to try out HDR photography, bringing detail to all the darker corners.

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WHAT SETTINGS WORK BEST?
Manual obviously gives your full control. Otherwise Aperture Priority will allow you to ensure that your scene is in sharp focus from front to back.