Evening Interior Design Photography – Annapolis, MD
Just had a nice interior design photography project in Annapolis, MD at a country club. The designer is based in Nashville, Tennessee and was looking for a photographer who works mostly with interior design. I met with the client about a month before the photo shoot to scout the lighting situation and possible angles.
We decided that evening photography was the best for this project because of the rich woodwork. Whenever I see dark woodwork I tend to pursue an evening photo shoot if access is possible late at night. The reason why I avoid daylight is because of many factors. Daylight can pour through the windows rather harsh depending on the time of day. Things to look out for are reflections that will make the woodwork look hazy and often times with a cyan or bluish cast. Depending on the window positioning, you may run into a lot of light falloff from the one side of the interior inward. This not just makes for a cavernous affect but the color temperate gets all muddy. Daylight will mix with artificial lighting in some places and the extremities will favor cool color temperatures or warmer. This uneven color temperature makes poor results.
Some will chime in about using strobes to help even things out. I really dislike strobe lighting in these situations and use it only to supplement the lighting, I try not to use it strongly. This comes down to my style but things are much easier and rewarding with careful planning. Just to add, regardless if strobes are used during the day, we still have high refections coming from the windows in many cases.
Here is the first photo of the evening. You can see by using evening light that we have a rather controllable interior. The color temperature of the lighting is rather even and we were able to use hot lights to fill certain areas with more detail. Also take note of the low amount of reflections on the woodwork. Instead of daylight coming from the side windows and throwing refections, we have incandescent lights that are dropping the light downward from the ceiling. Basically the angle of reflection is very different than daylight and this is the big reason we have nice details in the woodwork.
Evening Interior Design Photography
Some may ask about the shadows. Once again this is preference and style. I think some people get a bit hung up on these things and if you try to take out or greatly reduce so many items, next thing you know the photo appears lifeless and over lit. I like to soften the shadows just a little for detail but I enjoy seeing high contrast for some of these evening projects.
Below is a wider view of the interior space. I though of shooting from behind the bar and showing the chairs. These chairs were a bit off because of the curvature but I think they are neat. Two things the chairs are helping with and that’s breaking of the floor so we have less negative space and they also add a nice cool color to the image. Cool colors help punch things up because of the interior’s dominant warm tones. You will notice here and there some greens and blues throughout as accent colors.
That’s it for now. I can go on and on but I hope this helps everyone get a better understanding about evening photography shoots.
Evening Interior Design Photography
