Angle Tips?

[pristinephoto]

I am going to be shooting photos next week of a bed and breakfast. I was wondering if anyone had any good suggestions of angles to do to make the rooms look awesome. This will be my first building photo shoot and I am a little stumped.

Any tips are greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

 

[JerryPH]

You've never shot a picture of a room... ANYWHERE before?

- Ambient light seems to work best for me... if you are good at setting up strobes, that can make a nice difference.

- wide angle lenses work better

- try to capture and portray the character of the establishment in your pictures.

- check out sites on the web and see how others are doing it.

I'm really tempted to speak about a pet peeve of mine, but I'll shut my mouth for the moment.

 

[TamiyaGuy]

Just "normal" should be fine. Try making the scenery around you look interesting, rather than fiddling about with camera angles/settings. Although, having said that, a wide-angle/fisheye lens does make more of an impact on a room.

 

[JIP]

To me the real key to making a photo of a room really pop is lighting. It is real easy to just go in and fire a shot and think it is good whle there are alot of dead light and contrasting light situations that can easily be fixed with a little creative lighting.

 

[JerryPH]

...a wide-angle/fisheye lens does make more of an impact on a room.

You will never see a fish-eye picture of a room used as advertising for that room on any commercial site. It distorts the "look" so much that no one in their right mind could make a decision on if they wanted to rent that room (which is the goal of these kinds of pics), or not.

I said a wide angle, like perhaps something in a 20-50mm. Of course, it's a no brainer to just walk into any room, look around and ask yourself ONE question and that question will answer all your "angle" questions.

If anyone needs to ask what that question is... they should not be doing this professionally... lol.

 

[Dulouz]

If anyone needs to ask what that question is... they should not be doing this professionally... lol.

OK, since this is the Beginner's Place and I'm not doing pro work I'll ask.

What is that question?

 

[Rich Ardt]

Of course, it's a no brainer to just walk into any room, look around and ask yourself ONE question and that question will answer all your "angle" questions.

If anyone needs to ask what that question is... they should not be doing this professionally... lol.

Hm... perhaps there are some people around here who are not professional, but are honestly working a way to get there, and who would really benefit to be exposed to what that "ONE" question is...

Anyways, one piece of advice I could give you, pristinephoto, would be to give distortion factors a thought. When photographing buildings inside or out, and you want a straight on look, your lens should be positioned perpendicular to the walls. With this in mind, I have gotten some nice results using up to 17mm lenses - shooting straight, reorganizing the room to get nice features in the foreground, and concentrating on the balance within the image. I've worked as assistant to quite a few professional interior photogs, and without exception rooms were always delicately lit with soft light, and background features (or adjacent rooms) simply lit to highlight the presence thereof.

Personally (not that I specialize in interiors at ALL) I have used natural light as far as I could, when I have open windows I "open them up" more, as necessary, letting as much light in as possible - Paying attention to where the light will be at different times of the day, and plan the shoot around that, or even catching more light from outside and bouncing it in - even just a small pop up reflector does wonders... Especially because it's a bed and breakfast, you would want it to have a nice, soft and cozy feel... Tripod and time expose if the light is real low...

Find which pieces (of furniture) in the room really impress you, shoot stuff with using those as main feature, going wide, bringing it all into perspective. Shoot interesting or visually stimulating pieces up close, for example one B&B I did, delivered welcome letters to the guests after they arrived. I put an envelope with some made-up guests names printed on it on the bedside table, lit it with candlelight, and shot it close. Nice & warm, personal feeling.

Just some ideas, which I hope makes sense. But when you've done it once, you'll realize soon afterward where your mistakes were, and where you may have missed out on something, and you'll do better next time... There's a first time for all of us... Good luck!

 

[JerryPH]

OK, since this is the Beginner's Place and I'm not doing pro work I'll ask.

What is that question?

"What angle do I stand at that makes the room look good TO ME?"

When you ask, what happens? You walk around the room, stand on chairs, kneel down on the floor, bend over, look up, look down, look around corners and find not one but a lot of good angles. Just put yourself in the mindset of someone looking for a B&B and what apeals to you.

Common sense... "the sense that is the least common, when one's is not using their noggin".

Now do you understand why I said what I said? It may sound silly... buit then again, so was the original question, especially coming from a "professional".

 

[Mav]

shot with a fisheye:

Would anyone like to rent my tea room? It's nice and spacious and airy, and gets plenty of light! :mrgreen:

 

[JerryPH]

I wonder what that would look like if the distortion was lessened? I really like it from an artistic perspective!

 

[Mav]

Vertical distortion has already been eliminated via the Image Trends Hemi plug-in filter. What remains is horizontal distortion that you can see in the floor. I could remove that too and do a full rectilinear conversion, but at the cost of some of the angle of view. The chair on the right would get cut out, and probably a good chunk of the window on the left, which would also make the room look a lot smaller. It would also look even more distorted. In the photo as-is the room looks bigger than it really is, which is sorta the point, lol. And it has a fairly natural look to it, so people looking at the photo might be convinced that I wasn't using some funky lens to trick them into thinking it's a bigger room, when in reality I was using a funky lens and I am tricking them. I want them to book based on the photo and not actually come by and see the room and that it's really not "that" big, heh heh. :mrgreen:

Used properly, fisheye lenses can work great for interiors and give a very natural look with minimal "fun house effect" distortion correction needed.

 

[JerryPH]

Another VERY viable option that would have zero distortion is a simple and panoramic shot.

I am not talking a 360 degree here... but using the panoramic effect to gently extend the view of the room without the traditional fisheye distortions. And you would not need to sped $1500 to take 20 pics, using perhaps 2 of them for the shoot... lol

 

[pristinephoto]

Thanks for your help everyone

 

[asfixiate]

Pristine do you have a tripod? This will allow you to take your time.