A thread for real estate, architectural, and interior design photography

Jnader wrote in post #16908655
What do y'all find is the best way to bring in the exterior into the windows... Just the laso tool and an exterior exposure with some curves added?

If you get proficient with the pen tool, I find it to be much more accurate/forgiving. It allows you to use vector masks, which aren't rasterized and have editable points. Yes, the setup can be a little tedious but the results are worth it if you're after total minute control over your exposure on your windows.

Alternatively, you could expose for your windows and then light the interior — effectively doing it in one frame.

great work everyone!

here are a few i liked from recent shoots, more at my flickr

Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco

HI everyone! I am new to the forum, and came across this thread while doing a google search for information about non-competes for real estate photographers (I think way back in this thread there is some discussion on it). I absolutely blown away by the work in this thread and am truly inspired and as it seems there are many talented and expereinced arch/RE photogs here, I thought I would come to you for advice.

My degree is in fine art photography, and I have loved architectural photography for a long long time but never really had chances/opportunities to do any myself. I worked a short time in real estate photography and currently have been working for another RE photo/marketing company basically doing graphic design and admin work. My problem is now, I want to freelance with my photo and design work, and include RE photography in that as a service. My current boss says she'd be happy to let me shoot for her but whatever I decide to do, I must sign a non compete for a 3 year period, which seems a bit long to me. However on the flip side, I know she has a well established business and does get a lot of work, and to end my relationship with her to find out that I can not get work on my own is a scary thought. I guess I'm just having a hard time making the decision. By the way the previous RE work that I did is okay, but not wonderful. The company I worked with had everyone do the same style (on camera flash, everything on auto) so I don't even know if it's worth putting together a portfolio of my own with. (at least my lines look good they were quite picky about that!)

In this thread it seems that most people would say that going out on your own is a better idea (at least from the posts I was reading way back, which I think might be a couple years old).

Any thoughts on all this? I think I am just worried about being jobless although I do have some savings and some freelance work I can go back to before I started with her (just not nearly enough to pay for much). I can't stand the design work and admin work I am doing in this job anymore, and want to go back to shooting (although I want to continue doing design but not RE design).

Sorry this is so long, but any words of wisdom from the pros here would be awesome!

Why not try to get a few side-jobs and test the waters before cutting the strings. And I learned years ago that non-competes are not as binding as many think.

Twilight Exterior shots

I'm a big fan of Mike Kelley's work. Especially his composite lighting shots which he's well known for. I've been trying some of these shots on a few properties. Instead of a speedlight I'm using a 250w strobe with/without a bounce umbrella. It's a different approach but it seems to work fairly well for light coverage without having to take too many shots. It saves some time in post. It's no Mike Kelley, but I thought they turned out decent. I posted the raw images so you can see the before shots and the final composite. Sorry for the quality, photobuckets resizing really did a number on these.

Raw from camera

Open all raw images in photoshop
Pick a base image
Drag each image on top of the base image to create layers
Creat a layer mask for each image except base image
Invert all layer masks set blend mode to normal. Not lighten or lighter color, this will cause issues if the layers are even slightly mis aligned. Yes, even on a tripod there was a slight movement when reviewing the images between shots.
Grab a white paint brush and paint the light part of each layer. Set opacity of brush accordingly for smoother blending.
Once all layers are blended; the house, trees, and bushes were lit, but the sky and street were dark. So I brought in a lighter exposure of the same shot and made sure it was aligned. Then set the blend mode to "lighter color". This lightened up the sky and road.
I merged all of the layers together and used camera raw filter to make final tweaks and adjustments.


Raw images. Here are a few to give you the idea. There were 15 total single strobe shots

Here a few from a recent shoot, hope you enjoy!

Noe Valley, San Francisco

Nicely done..all ambient, or a mix?