Flash Vs. HDR For Interiors And Real Estate Photography, Part II: Mood And Color Case Study

About six months ago, I wrote a piece comparing flash techniques to HDR and ambient-only techniques when shooting for architecture and interiors clients. There was some great discussion involved and many valid points raised, and I'd like to take a few minutes to bring up another scenario that really shows the benefits of using flash whenever possible when dealing with interior or architectural situations. We'll be looking at how flash can add mood and control color, something we didn't touch on in too much depth in the last iteration of this article.

Every week, I get a ton of questions from photographers looking to get into architecture and interiors photography, something I've been working hard on for years now (here's my portfolio, if you don't trust me), and one of the more common questions is how to deal with color casts and how to use light when shooting interiors. While there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of ways to shoot any space, today we're going to focus on the benefits granted by using off-camera lighting when faced with a very tricky lighting situation, one that HDR simply could not realistically handle on its own.

I was recently commissioned to shoot this fantastic interior space for one of my clients, and upon meeting with the client, we discussed possible options for shooting this space. She really wanted to show the relation of the design to the large windows and how the design played off of the large amounts of natural light afforded by them. The couch was situated to take advantage of the natural light, and show views to the attached guesthouse and pool, which were not seen in this shot. Her biggest insistence was that we show how the room feels on a summer afternoon when everything is basking in natural light and there was a real 'lemonade and a good book' vibe to the whole thing. Challenge accepted!

The first and most obvious problem was that we were shooting this at the total wrong time of year and due to scheduling, we had to shoot it at a less than optimal time of day, and the sun hadn't quite been able to get in the exact position that the client had in mind. Not a problem, I say. The second problem that immediately popped up as soon as I took a test shot was the incredible green cast that washed over everything. Even though those giant windows are really awesome and we want to show them in all their glory, we have got to do something about that green cast. Because there was a lot of shrubbery right outside of the window, the sunlight was hitting those shrubs and picking up the green color from them, and then it was bouncing inside and coating the floors, ceilings, and everything in between with a sickly green cast. So after taking our initial test shot, seen here:

Test shot

I had to figure out just how I wanted to tame that green cast and start to show this room in the mood that the designer intended.

So, first things first. I'm going to increase my shutter speed to kill most of the ambient light, which is mostly that green vomit light coming in from those windows. And that leaves us with this:

Test shot without ambient, faster shutter speed

Which is admittedly pretty terrible. We managed to get rid of most of the green light coming in the window (there's still a bit left, but not to worry) and reign in those blown out windowsills. The next thing we have to do is of course add some light to the interior to properly expose it. Remember, our client was insistent that we showcase the mood of this space as if were a sunny morning or afternoon with light streaming in the windows. We want it to look like you could walk in here and relax with a book and lemonade (or adult beverage of your choice) so the first thing I KNOW I am going to want to do is fake some sunlight by putting a light out the window. I also know that I'm going to have to add some more light to the interior from the other direction to balance out the dark interior - we're definitely going to need more than one light here. So the first thing I did was head outside and start getting my 'fake' sunlight set up, and after that I threw some lights inside. My initial test setup was one light out the windows, a light through an umbrella camera right, and a couple bounced lights in the kitchen. I then started firing off some test frames:

More ambient, little bit of flash in window, check the shadows on the couch from that light outside starting to form:

More flash in window:

Even less ambient:

EVEN LESS ambient because why not, let's test it out:

More ambient for a more natural feel:

Starting to find some semblance of a balance, but the dark kitchen...yeck!

First attempt at light in kitchen windows...not really working for me...I'll have to adjust...

These test shots are also pretty weak in every way, because they are, well, test shots. I'm trying to find the right balance between interior light and exterior light, softness of light, amount of light, and the relation between ambient and flash. I don't really have a set system here - it's very much a 'wing it until it looks good' seat of the pants type of thing. You'll notice as you look at the shots that I'm playing with my shutter speed and lighting setup - as I decide to remove more color cast or ambient light, I'll increase the shutter speed and add more flash accordingly. I also play with the positioning of the lights. Sometimes it works and I keep it, and sometimes it looks awful and I'll toss it. It's all a game of trial and error. You'll also notice that the designer is moving through the room and playing with objects slightly. We're both sort of taking our time getting everything perfect, my lighting and her design relative to the camera. This is one of those times where it's so critical to be able to shoot tethered and be able to show the client what is going on so you can collaborate and bounce ideas off of one another. For this shoot and most of my shoots I'm using a CamRanger, which if you'd like to learn more about, you can check out my review here.

Anyway, you can see our shot sort of coming together. After I confer with the client that she likes the direction we're heading in, I go back to adding some more light to the kitchen to bring it up to speed with the rest of the image. Here are a few more attempts at that - I'm just going around back there with my iPad and trying out different modifiers until I was happy with what I was getting. Umbrellas, grids, bare lights, in the windows, bounced, I'm just kind of throwing some light around until I'm satisfied with what I'm getting. Total time? One or two minutes. Don't need to overthink it, as it isn't the focal point of the shot, but we do need to have some light back there so we can tell what's going on.

Kitchen test shots...

Note the changing lighting in the kitchen in each shot...

Hotspot on ceiling

Too bright...

Hotspot on left...

As you can see, I'm just kind of improvising: Too much, too little, different modifiers, different angles, existing lights on, existing lights off.

At this point, I think you guys understand what's going on here. I'm just trying to add and remove light until I'm happy with the result. You can see me playing with lights and adding light that wasn't there - something you can't (realistically) do in Photoshop. At this point I've added a light coming in the window to simulate sunlight, and I've added some soft light from camera right for the foreground and also in the kitchen to fill it up. It's about now that I'm getting pretty close to where I want the picture to be, and I again go back and confer with the designer to make sure that we're on the same page. We go over any last minute edits to the design, and sign off on each other's work. It's very much a collaborative effort, so we're constantly cross-checking and working together to make sure that I don't add some funky light where it shouldn't be or that she doesn't accidentally put an enormous potted plant in the way of the entire composition.

Before I show you the finished shot, I want to show you how this scene would look as shot without flash. I'm going to try my hardest here to make it look pretty good without using ANY flash frames. In order to give my non-flashed images as much dog in this fight as possible, I've even gone as far as to turn off the existing lighting in the scene (sconces, lamps, chandeliers etc) to mitigate any additional color casts that we'd have to contend with.

So first up to the plate - we've got an HDR Tonemapped image created with Photomatix, which is pretty well known across the industry and by far the most used HDR application. This was run through the program with pretty basic edits, again, I tried to get it to look as good as possible. Here's what I came up with:

Tonemapped HDR

I don't really know what needs to be said here other than the fact that I regret that this image ever existed. The colors are way off, the window frames are all gross, and it looks like there's smoke damage throughout the interior due to the program struggling to separate out the lights and darks. Midtones are very muddy, as well. I highly recommend you steer far clear of HDR Tonemapping for all interiors work for this reason. HDR Fusion provides a much better engine, and comes bundled with Photomatix HDR software. Here's what the fusion version looks like:

Fusion HDR


It's quite a bit better, but still falls short in my eyes. I actually took this into Photoshop and locally adjusted color and saturation in an effort to tame that green cast, which has been slightly mitigated. The problem is that there is no real way to just 'fix' a cast like this. You could select the greens with a hue/saturation adjustment layer or the eyedropper tool and pull them down (either in Photoshop, Lightroom, or Aperture) but what happens is that you not only kill the greens and yellows that we want to kill, but we also kill those that we want to keep, such as in the potted plants and the exterior. For this image, I did a quick job of masking out the exterior but lets get realistic for a moment. Nobody wants to sit around masking out individual leaves of a potted plant to ensure that the greens there are true to life, but that the greens on the wall are gone. By using the ambient frames to make an HDR blend, we basically guarantee that we are going to have an ugly color cast in the room in a situation like this. No amount of white balance or levels can fix it, because as I said, you're going to have a hell of a time masking around all the objects that should be green when you try to clean up the objects that shouldn't. Catch my drift?

Again, let's revisit the ambient only frame to see how this looks. I did the same thing here - ran it through Photoshop for a bit of color correction, but the same problem are evident. Blown out windows, highlights way gone, and color casts throughout. But, to be frank, I honestly prefer this to either HDR version.
Single exposure with slight edits

Now I want to show you the final image that I delivered to my client. This is more or less straight out of camera - the only adjustments were some selective dodging and burning, and shadow/highlight adjustments. I didn't spend any time correcting color casts because I didn't have to. My shutter speed was fast enough to kill the green ambient light that was bouncing in the window from the shrubs, and it still properly exposed the interior.

Final flashed image

As you can see, the colors are true to life and the interior is properly exposed with shadows and highlights just where I want them to create mood. The window view is crystal clear and there's no smoke damage. Cool. Let's check out a straight out of camera ambient exposure so we can compare the difference again:

Ambient straight out of camera

To further hammer this point home, I've made a comparison image for you that's split down the middle showing the straight-out-of-camera exposure and the final flashed image. The difference is REALLY clear here! Look at the color cast, it's completely gone, and the furniture, wall colors, paints, and decor are the true colors that the designer had in mind when she put all of this together. For obvious reasons, we want to represent the designer's work as true-to-life as we can in terms of colors and feel, because they get paid a hell of a lot to make sure it all looks good and color is such an important part of that.

Comparison

But really...let's just disregard all of that for a second. Forget the color casts, forget the proper exposure, forget my technical mumbo jumbo up top about balance interior light and exterior light and flash levels and blah blah blah. What does the final flashed image have that NONE of the others have?

Mood. Yep, it's got mood. By using flash, we are able to convey a feeling. We're able to CONTROL the scene in front of us. What good is it going to be to take photos where you're completely out of control? You wouldn't want to shoot a portrait without being able to move your subject or add and control light, would you? By having control, we're able to make a scene that says "Hey you, yeah you, viewer! Check this out. I'm a living room that's washed in early morning or afternoon sunlight, and I know you want to grab your iPad and coffee and come sit over here while the golden retriever curls up at your feet." By using flash, we are able to control so much more than if we were to just shoot it as is. I could take this in SO many directions. I could add a softbox to my light outside, and create a cloudy, filtered sunlight mood. I could gel that light and create a sunset mood. I could get rid of the light outside altogether and just shoot a bright, clean, properly exposed interior with no color casts if that's what the client wanted.

So if you want to take your inteiors photography to the next level, start using lights in your workflow. If a client comes to you and says "I designed this space with this mood in mind" you'll be able to deliver exactly what they want. I don't make Xeroxes of rooms, and I don't want you to, either. I want you to be able to create a mood that the client had in mind when they designed the space, and I want you to make photos so good that the client will be thrilled with them for years to come.

So to wrap it up, here are a few facts:

Time spent adding light outside: 5 minutes, one light (bare on a tall stand)
Time spent lighting foreground: 2 minutes, one light (through large umbrella camera right)
Time spent lighting kitchen: 5 minutes, 2 lights (one bounced from the right, one shot through window from the left)
Time spent in post: 3 minutes at most

Total time lighting; 12-15 minutes. Add some chimping and re-arranging. Another ten minutes. Total time? 30 minutes. That doesn't count what the designer did on her own time, but I want to show you that this can be done quickly and efficiently with practice.

I hope you learn something from these tutorials, and that you're able to put this stuff into practice in your own photography. I've teamed up with the Fstoppers crew to create something big that's going to come out in the next few months, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for that, as I'll be giving away tons of tips and insights.

-Mike Kelley
mpkelley.com