As we’ve been spending more time with the Sony RX100 III, we’ve published some of our initial thoughts on the Operation and Controls of this highly intriguing camera and expanded our impressions of the pop-up electronic viewfinder. We also shot a short video showing what’s new so you can get a first-hand look at the 20MP compact with 1″-type sensor and faster, wider 24-70mm F1.8-2.8 lens. Learn more and see video
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Photography has never been more important to selling real estate than it is today. The markets are heating up again and demand for real estate creates demand for photography. This is good news to photographers, but like any business, there is plenty of competition. If you are new to real estate and architecture photography, here are some general guidelines to start you on the right path.
A camera, lens, and tripod, are all that is required to get started, but you might quickly learn that many competitors are very proficient at using supplemental lighting and Photoshop techniques.
Your camera should allow you to add a cable release, a flash, different lenses, and wireless triggers. Wide angle lenses are required. For cropped sensor cameras a lens around 10-22mm or 12-24mm is perfect, and for full frame sensor cameras, a lens around 16-35 mm will do the job.
Tilt-shift lenses help avoid converging vertical lines such as wall edges and door frames leaning in or out. There are several tilt-shift lenses available from Canon’s 17mm, the 24mm from Canon and Nikon, and others. While these lenses are wonderful to use, they are fixed focal length so if you need a perspective that is for example; 19 mm or 27 mm or somewhere in between, a 16-35mm zoom lens is a great companion to a tilt-shift lens.
This image before processing shows diverging vertical lines, seen best by the edge of the fireplace, from using a 16-35mm lens tilted down to add foreground and minimize ceiling.
Shooting techniques vary from exposure blending, HDR, wireless flash, and light painting with multiple exposures. No matter your shooting style the camera should not be moved to guarantee image alignment of multiple exposures. The camera’s self-timer, a cable release, or wireless triggers insure no camera movement. The iOS App or Camranger also triggers the camera and provide a preview of the photo on a smart device.
The first image a potential buyer sees (usually) when reviewing properties online is an exterior photo. That photo is important so take the time to find the best angle and best light. Ask the realtor what are the important features to highlight. They usually want exterior photographs from front and rear, a deck or patio, landscaping and gardens, pool or hot tub, a barn, shop, or other outbuildings. Each feature should be emphasized in the composition by using the surroundings, like beautiful gardens leading to a cool garden shed.
The client was most interested in the outdoor theater under cover on the back porch, which I captured, but I also captured this image showing the patio furniture and giving a broader view of the backyard.
Most outdoor subjects benefit from early or late day lighting, including real estate. Using Google Maps and Google Earth can help you determine the best time of day prior to the photo shoot. Searching only takes minutes and provides an idea whether a home faces the sunrise or sunset, or neither.
Light hitting the front of a home is perfect as seen here after sunrise.
In winter, some homes facing south never have the sun hitting the front of the home To avoid shooting into the sun, photograph from the same end of the house as the sun.
This home has a huge hedge behind the camera and a street lined with cars. Photographing from the left put the sun right above the roof but moving to the right side was a better perspective and the sun was out of view.
Overcast skies can eliminate any problems with sun’s position, but shooting on poor days is a decision best discussed with the realtor. The advantage is you can shoot any time of the day but the disadvantage is white skies can lessen the impact of an otherwise great exterior image.
The dusk/dark technique
The dusk/dark technique is often requested by clients because it helps sell properties. The image is photographed outside and from the best angle to showcase the house. The technique is to turn on all the lights in a room and shoot at a certain time. After sunset the sky’s exposure will balance with the room lights’ exposure. A better approach is to add lights to the rooms creating even lighting, and working this way means not having to wait for that perfect balance between room lights and outdoor light.
Homes come in all shapes, sizes, styles, and conditions. I always tell my clients that I am not in the house cleaning business, so I send them a task list with my suggestions on prepping the home prior to the photo session. Once inside, I set out to photograph the main rooms: the living room, kitchen, dining area, master bedroom, master bath, are all ‘must shoot’ rooms. There could also be a library, office, large walk-in closet, and more. The client can often tell you what they deem important. Next, seek the best perspective for each room.
The master bathroom
I describe my approach as using the inside elements: furniture, windows, and room layout, to create visual flow. I generally try to avoid composing something large in the foreground that prevents the eye from flowing through the room.
This is the first test shot I took of this room and the foreground chair blocked the flow through the room.
By rotating the chair and lowering the camera height slightly, the eye can flow through the room easier. This image also has the vertical lines corrected.
There is broad agreement among clients and photographers, that if there is to be a rule it will state: verticals must be correct! In most interiors there are edges and corners of walls, door frames, and windows that have vertical sides and these edges need to truly be vertical. When you use a tilt-shift lens this problem is solved, but tilting the camera up or down with a non-TS wide angle lens makes vertical edges converge or diverge and they no longer appear straight.
One widely used approach is to level the camera using a hot shoe bubble level, making edges straight. While this is a simple solution, it is not always the best solution when using a non-TS lens. A level camera at chest height can result in foreground subjects, like furniture being cutoff at the bottom with too much ceiling at the top. Lowering the camera height will improve this problem but how low can you go and still have an effective photo?
This image by one of my online course students; Simone Brogini, illustrates this point. His camera is chest high and is levelled to avoid diverging lines. The problem as I mentioned, is that the foreground furniture is cutoff and there is too much ceiling that lacks interest.
Simone also shot this bedroom image the same way. It looks pretty good but I advised him again that in my opinion the camera height might be just a little too low, as the bed and furniture get only about 1/3 of the frame and the wall and windows use 2/3 of the frame.
So what is the perfect camera height? There are many opinions. Some suggest chest height while others suggest door knob height or even lower, all to avoid diverging verticals lines. I prefer chest height or close and correcting vertical lines using other methods like a tilt-shift lens or the Lens Correction Tool in Photoshop (or Lightroom).
This image shows the use of the Lens Correction Tool. The bed and furniture consume 2/3 of the frame and provide a fuller view of the room.
The perfect interior exposure is challenging when balancing bright window light, with darker interiors. You can deal with scene contrast many ways; one is to shoot when outdoor light levels are lower. Midday light will be much brighter outside than during or after sunset, or on a cloudy day. Turning on every light inside increases the interior brightness, and if the outdoor brightness is lower a RAW file can often capture the scene in one frame.
This room has a dark ceiling, a dark floor, a window flare and hot spots with too much contrast for one capture. (see corrected version below)
On a overcast day, the interior exposure is quite good as well as the window exposure. A flash was bounced off the ceiling on the right.
To make sure I have all the exposures for a great image, I determine my ‘base exposure’, the image that has most of the data centred in the histogram. Then I bracket widely in +/- one stop increments of varied exposures so I have variety just in case I need them. Lightroom and Photoshop, and certainly other programs, allow selective lightening and darkening of shadows and highlights on a single image, but if the contrast is too much, I can blend those bracketed images into a great final image.
The Adjustment Brush in Lightroom was used to bring down the brightness of the left window.
Just like a finely lit portrait, interiors can benefit greatly from nicely styled lighting. HDR can manage scene contrast but it does not create highlights and shadows in areas that have no directional light. If you have a dark cabinet against a dark wall, adding supplemental light can bring out that needed detail.
Most interiors have two light sources: window light and interior lights, both constant light sources. You can add constant lights or use strobe or flash. Constant lights, unlike flash, are like the lamp on the table or window light. Changing your exposure to darken window light also changes the exposure brightness of your constant lights. Flash is not a constant light! If you change your shutter speed to darken the window light exposure, flash exposure will not change and for this reason; flash or strobe provides flexibility when lighting interiors.
Photographers shooting for architects or magazines often have plenty of time to photograph a property with finely crafted lighting techniques, but a real estate photographer’s time is usually limited, making flash the perfect tool. Some photographers have mastered the balancing act of using direct on-camera flash to fill in a scene while others use on-camera flash in a bounce capacity.
Here the only light is coming from a window on the left and the ceiling fixtures, leaving dark areas in front.
Adding bounce flash, handheld just to the right of the camera, filled in those darker areas effectively.
Also popular are multi-flash wireless set ups allowing the flash to be placed around a room for styled lighting. Also growing in popularity is the ‘light painting’ approach where areas are selectively lit and the exposures are blended.
This image utilizes the Light Painting approach to interior lighting.
One side effect with outdoor lighting mixing with interior lighting is ‘lighting color balance‘. This is different than camera White Balance settings. Camera White Balance is set to either specific areas of your scene or set to average all light sources together.
There is a blue color cast above and right side of the window as well as the floor on the left.
When you have mixed light, such as daylight colored window light mixing with tungsten colored ceiling lights, and then throw in a fluorescent kitchen light, you have a veritable palette of different colors mixing together. Walls closest to windows will be blue while the wall closest to a lamp will be amber and the ceiling in the kitchen will have a green tint.
The final image shows color correction in those areas as well as corrected verticals and removal of window flare.
In some cases the effects of mixed light will be minimal and other times require attention. You can prevent mixed color in many cases by color matching the inside lights to the same color or use Photoshop color correction techniques to change color of specific areas.
Once you have completed the assignment you will need to deliver the image files. Clients may have different preferences, but mine usually request low resolution for the web and high resolution for print publication.
Be sure to save your files in the proper file format and size for the intended use. Most Multiple Listing Service’s specify what is accepted format and acceptable sizes. I use Photoshop and the Save for Web option for the low resolution and TIFF format for high resolution. Then final delivery of the files is made by Dropbox or a comparable online service.
Things to remember doing real estate photography:
There are many styles and techniques you can use to photograph architecture and real estate and you should master them all. Real estate photography is architecture photography and you can photograph a home for a real estate agent for $ 200 or photograph a model home for a home builder for $ 1000 or more. Start small, plan big!
The post Real Estate Photography – a Guide to Getting Started by Charlie Borland appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Rorschachbilder haben mich schon immer fasziniert. In der Schule habe ich mit Vorliebe meine Tintenpatrone auf einem Blatt entleert und mich nach dem Falten über die schönen Muster gefreut, in denen ich meist Schmetterlinge, Pflanzen, kleine Männchen und Monster sah. Damals hatte ich noch keine Kamera, sonst hätte ich diese Muster vielleicht auch dokumentiert, wie es Esther Lobo in ihrer Fotoserie „Rorschach“ getan hat.
Esther erschafft ihre Rorschachbilder nicht mit Tinte, sondern mit Essen. Joghurt, Eis, Senf – alles, was eine passende Konsistenz hat, wird zu Rorschachmustern zerquetscht. Ich stelle es mir auf jeden Fall sehr spaßig vor, eine Packung Barbecuesoße im Namen der Kunst zu zerdrücken und finde ihre kleine Serie sehr lustig und gleichzeitig auch ästhetisch. In die Mitte jedes Bildes legt Esther die leere Verpackung.
Esther Lobo lebt und arbeitet in Madrid. Mehr verrät die Fotografin nicht über sich und selbst das Profilbild auf ihrer Homepage gibt nichts preis. Hier findet Ihr aber noch weitere Fotoserien der Künstlerin.
kwerfeldein – Fotografie Magazin | Fotocommunity
[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]
Bring the clean, graphic lines of cubes, pyramids, prisms and other polyhedrons to your home with these (often literally) sharp accessories. Hand-drawn shapes on wallpaper, icosahedron salt and pepper shakers, DIY origami ornaments, modernized Himmeli mobiles and diamond-shaped cookie cutters are among these 15 affordable geometric decorative objects.
The imperfect nature of hand-drawing adds a bit of a quirky feel to the ‘Random Geometry’ wallpaper by Nama Rococo. Plaster an entire room with it, create an accent wall or just frame a single sheet for $ 100.
Glassworker Matthew Cleland of Score + Solder creates stunning geometric terrariums, planters, lamps and more, handmade to order from his 13-acre farm in British Columbia.
Perfect for the mantle or as a conversation piece on the coffee table, this octahedron decorative object by Eric Trine costs just $ 32.
Protect your table from condensation with this set of four handmade felt pentahedron coasters, handmade in San Francisco by Koromiko, $ 40.
This set of icosahedron-shaped salt and pepper shakers by Club88inc, $ 35, will fit perfectly into the palm of your hand.
Using a piece of furniture for a purpose other than that for which it is intended inspired this series of clever furniture accessories.
Click Here to Read More »»
Everyone knows there are mathematical patterns to be found everywhere in nature – though few such geometries are as explicit and dazzling as these.
Click Here to Read More »»
Repeating mathematical patterns show up in tables, LED lights, columns and large-scale architecture. Here are 12 examples of fractal-inspired design.
Click Here to Read More »»
[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]
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If you want to take your landscape photography to the next level, it’s time to start thinking about how you balance your subjects. The most powerful compositional tools that you have at your disposal are your knees, and your feet.
Simply stepping to the side a couple of feet can change your landscape compositions drastically. Take things one step further (weak pun intended) and bend those old knees to get a lower point of view. Now things might start to look more interesting.
The reason why I say this is because horizontal and vertical movement will allow you to achieve the ideal balance of subjects in your landscape images. If you’ve got a camera with one of those flippable LCD screens, you’ll be able to get right down on the ground or way up high on your tripod. Nice.
Something Wicked
I’m referring to how you balance subjects in your image on the horizontal and vertical planes. Simply plonking your interesting subject slap bang in the centre of your image might work, but there are times when you might get a better composition by placing it to one side of your image, and counter balancing that with something on the opposing side.
With my image above ‘ Something Wicked’, I wanted the moody storm clouds to be the main subject but it was essential to capture it bearing down on the mesa. By devoting the lower third of the frame to the mesa and the upper two thirds to the menacing clouds above, I balanced the subjects to my liking.
There may be times when you actually use interesting space to counterbalance your main subject, don’t assume that your spaces have to be filled with obvious subjects. I like to invite my viewers to think about what’s in that space, drawing their eye to what at first appears to be nothing, but upon closer inspection reveals something interesting.
Balancing subjects in images that feature reflections is really important. Perhaps you want to give more emphasis to the reflected elements? Movement from left to right, or up and down, can really place those elements exactly where they need to be. Moving one foot to the left might eliminate a pleasing mountain ridge in the distance. Dropping down a few inches might bring it back.
With my image of Mono Lake above, I found that if I got too low to the ground, I lost some of the mass in the reflected clouds. The ideal vertical position was at an agonizing semi crouch that had my quads screaming. If I’d moved a little more to my right I would have lost the foreground tufa mound that you see in the lower left corner, which adds depth to the image.
I’ve done this so many times that I no longer think about doing it, something just clicks and I know the shot is in the bag. When you’re starting out however, this might require a bit of conscious thought, so here are two tips I always teach to my workshop students.
After you’ve taken a shot with your camera at normal height on the tripod, squat down for a few seconds and survey the scene from a lower perspective. Make it a habit and I can virtually guarantee* that you’ll see a better shot around 50% of the time.
Rather than shuffling left to right, I often like to crack out my Cobra impersonation and move my head from side to side while trying to maintain the same height. By doing this I can see how my foreground subjects move around the subjects in the distance. If you see some bloke with a tripod on a cliff edge who looks like he’s doing some type of shamanic dance, that’s me setting up a shot.
This sounds really obvious, but I notice a lot of photographers don’t bother with these two basic moves. There’s more to composition than your standard tripod setup.
My shot of Los Arcos Park in Cabo San Lucas (Mexico) is a prime example of how ‘doing the Cobra’ helped me to visualize the ideal composition for having El Capitan (the central sea stack) positioned so that it fits just right in that gap. If I’d moved just 12 inches left or right I would have lost that pleasing ‘equidistant’ position. If I’d moved lower (the Squat), that foreground rock would have obscured the footsteps in the sand that lead your eye towards El Capitan.
Yes, yes, I realize I’m a one man tripod enforcement unit but I’ll often start a shoot without the tripod so that I’ve got the freedom of movement to find the best compositions. Once I’ve discovered that ideal balance of subjects along the vertical and horizontal planes, I’ll grab the tripod and take the shot. This will save you a lot of fiddling around with the tripod, especially if you’re rocking one of those flimsy box store tripods that belong in the recycling bin.
Go out and try the ‘Squat and Cobra’, then post your comments here to let me know your results. Being conscious of how you balance your subjects will give you better landscape images, and with practice, will become automatic.
** Guarantee is virtual and only worth the paper on which it is written.
For more articles on composition try these:
The post Using Balance in Your Landscape Photography Composition by Gavin Hardcastle appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Announcing a new landscape photography book: The Insightful Landscape
A very special collaboration has been made by 26 highly talented landscape photographers including Guy Tal, Michael E. Gordon, Andy Biggs, Tim Parkin, Gary Crabbe, Floris van Breugel, Richard Wong, Alister Benn, myself and many more. (see the complete list below)
If you love Landscape Photography then you’ll want to pick up a copy. This book was put together to share our passion for nature and help make a chartable donation to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation on behalf of a participating photographer’s son, who is fighting the disease.
Purchase The Insightful Landscape in print or digital format today
Complete Contributing Photographer List:
Dan Ballard
Alister Benn
Andy Biggs
Floris van Breugel
Peter Carroll
Bill Chambers
David Chauvin
Gary Crabbe
Ken Cravillion
Matthew Cromer
David Fantle
Jim Goldstein
Michael E. Gordon
Jack Graham
David Leland Hyde
Youssef Ismail
Joseph Kayne
Chuck Kimmerle
Colleen Miniuk-Sperry
Lon Overacker
Tim Parkin
Rafael Rojas
Jim Sabiston
Scott Schroeder
Guy Tal
Richard Wong
Copyright Jim M. Goldstein, All Rights Reserved
The Insightful Landscape – A New Landscape Photography Book
The post The Insightful Landscape – A New Landscape Photography Book appeared first on JMG-Galleries – Landscape, Nature & Travel Photography.
It’s not that uncommon for a photographer to create a new photographic backpack. But it’s unusual for a photographer to put a high-tech photo streaming studio into one, creating a mobile photo transmission solution that shaves precious time off of submitting images to editors. But that’s just what New York Times staff photographer Josh Haner did. Learn more
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Yup, you read that right: If you want value on top of value that you can’t beat or find anywhere else, then you absolutely have to make plans to check out the Big Bang Bundle from Inky Deals. You won’t regret it, and you’ll be surprised at the insane degree of value that you’ll find there. Calling all photographers: This Continue Reading
The post Check out the Big Bang Bundle: A Design Bundle Worth $ 15K for Only $ 49…Insane! appeared first on Photodoto.
Even longtime Photoshop and Lightroom users sometimes forget the myriad of keyboard shortcuts used to trigger the program’s powerful features. Now web developer Waldo Bronchart has made a web application called ‘Application Shortcut Manager’ to help you remember. It’s an interactive website that displays all the keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop, Lightroom and Blender. Learn more
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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