Shooting and lighting a hair salon

I have a job coming up where I'll be doing portraits (that I'm comfortable with), but they've also asked me to shoot the inside of the hair salon (an upscale, modern, artsy type of place). I'll have strobes there for the portrait shots. So I could use those or just bounce a flash on the camera. I haven't been inside the place yet. I know nothing about the wall colors or types of lights they use. I'm wondering if I should be prepared to gel the flash or the strobes, and for those of you who take these types of pictures for real estate ads or whatever, what do you do? Thanks.

I've shot a few brides getting ready in a salon. I'd treat it like any other interior shooting. I generally bounce my on camera speedlite and try to keep the ambient exposure within a stop to a stop and a half.

If the light and wall colors are really wacko, then shoot a color checker or white balance card so you can correct in post.

Like many interiors, once you start trying to light it with monolights and or speedlites it turns into a real production.

With any luck there will be enough window light to keep the white balance within reason.

Seems like the only potential challenge is all those mirrors that might bounce light in ways you don't predict.

My wife has been to this salon and said the walls are mostly gray, and there are white drapes on the windows. So that sounds pretty good! As you mentioned, Curtis, I'm nervous about all the mirrors in a salon. It sounds like keeping it simple would probably work best, bouncing an on-camera speedlite to fill shadows.

I have shot in a salon before. As Curtis mentioned mirrors were the biggest challenge. Bring stuff to cover the mirrors and perhaps the windows with.

If you can't get an angle that meshes well with lights and mirrors, shoot from a tripod, strobes off, bracketed sequence (-1, 0, +1, or so). Strobes on, touch up in post with masking and layers.

If the salon shots are to be architectural shots without people, then tripod and some bracketing with available light is probably better. That will permit capturing the architectural lighting without blowing it out.

For some reason when I read your post the first time, I was thinking more of getting the hair ready shots.

The mirrors are part of the salon so you will have to take them into consideration and use them to crate interest.

I'd use at least a 5 stop bracket. How that I have a 5DIII is use the 7 stop bracket. Makes it easy on a tripod -- Just hold the shutter down until all seven exposures are done.