How to Photograph Small Rooms on a Yacht

In this video tutorial, I'm going to show you how I photographed the bedrooms on a $12 million yacht. Although the rooms are large for a boat, they are very small compared to your average bedroom. 

Although most architectural photographers will tell you that 12mm is too wide, when you're shooting small rooms, the wider the better. I shot on the Sony a7 IV and Sony 12-24mm f/2.8 at 12mm. Remember, wide angle lenses do not cause perspective distortion; the position of your camera does. As long as your camera is as far back as it can be, shooting with a wider lens will not create more distortion; it will simply reveal more of the room. You can always crop in to get an identical-looking shot (minus a bit of resolution) when taken with a longer lens. 

To get the best possible image of a room, you're going to want to composite images together. Remember, the camera can't move between shots, so I decided to control my camera with my phone rather than potentially moving it while changing settings. I bracketed shots with the window closed and the lights in the room on and again with the window open and lights off. 

To capture the view outside, I stopped down to f/22 to get a correct exposure of the view, and I then bounced a strobe in the room to balance the light inside and outside. Finally, I took a shot while I was standing in the bathroom, firing directly onto the bed to mimic a beam of sunlight. 

Compositing all of these images together can't really be explained in text, so watch the video above to see the entire process.

Today, we have started the largest sale we've ever done for our photography tutorials at the Fstoppers Store. If you're interested in learning more about shooting spaces, I highly recommend our series with Mike Kelley, called Where Art Meets Architecture.