Professional photographer Sean McCormack has put together an excellent article on interior photography, over at Digital Photography School.
These tips will help you enormously, whether you’re just shooting for fun for your personal blog, trying to create a new source of income, or you simply just want to improve your photography skills.
All you need is your camera and a sturdy tripod!
Use a tripod
You can nip around and shoot handheld, but for many houses, you may need longer exposures. High ISO will just introduce too much noise, so a tripod is the best option. It does slow you down, but it also makes you concentrate on the shot more. You can use the time to check around the frame for stray cables, or clutter, and create the composition before you hit the shutter button. A few of the other tips benefit from using a tripod as well.
Use Live View
I shoot with a Fuji X-T10, so everything is live view, either by screen or by electronic viewfinder. Most cameras have a Live View option (if your camera has a video mode you likely have Live View), meaning you can see the shot before you take it. It’s even better if the camera has a tilt screen.
Shot one or two point perspectives
There are standard views you can shoot. A 1-point perspective is shooting so the sensor plane is parallel to a wall. It shows the side wall leading into the back wall and helps set a scene. A 2-point perspective is where you’re shooting into a corner. The corner doesn’t need to be centered in the frame, but don’t try and show three walls.
Go vertical for magazines
With so much interior work viewed on the web, there’s been a shift towards horizontal images in the interior photography world. But print magazines are still out there, and if you want your work published, you’ll need to shoot verticals for single magazine pages. Verticals usually mean letting the eye fill in gaps, so make use of composition to show hints of the room.
Bracket, bracket, bracket
When shooting interiors, there’s often a huge range of light in a room. From the light outside to the darkest corners of a room. Often it’s more than your camera can capture in one shot. Bracketing is your friend here. This means you’re taking a normal exposure, a shot 2 stops underexposed, and one 2 stops overexposed. Lightroom’s Merge to HDR function can be used to combine the shots for more editing leeway. You can also opt to use more shots (4 stops under and overexposed if you want even more latitude) for example, when you want to show the view outside a window.
Read the full article with even more tips over at Digital Photography School.
Source: Digital Photography School
