One crucial advice to take better interior shots!
People always ask me why their images don’t look as clean as mine do. To take clean shots, you need a clean room. I know, it’s not the most pleasant part of architectural photography but probably the most important.
Get everything perfect in camera!
Every architectural photographer looks for nice angles, plans ahead the perfect lighting to get a moody image, is concerned with the right choice of lenses and gear. Nobody really gets excited about cleaning and staging the room for the shot. But there is nothing worse than a forgotten toothbrush in a bathroom or badly folded towels.
Why staging makes a difference.
Even when I’m under time pressure or have to deal with the owners to get rid of some private stuff, I always make sure nothing is in the picture, which doesn’t belong there.
My approach is more or less always the same. After I got my perfect angle to take the image, I take a picture with my smartphone to see where all the stuff was placed.
Then I remove everything which is in my frame. Less is always more, therefore I put just a few things back in the image to stage the room. Otherwise, it might look like nobody is living there.
The view of the camera is different.
In the bathroom you don’t really have to do this part, but in every other room, I would also rearrange the furniture, when necessary. Very often, rooms are designed to look appealing in real life, through the lens of a camera it’s a totally different game. If you have the possibility shoot tethered to an iPad, it the best time-safer and a very good investment.
Don’t stress yourself and stay focussed.
After I took all my images, I put the stuff back where it was, thus the image with the smartphone. You won’t be able to remember at all, where the things belong. A photo shoot is a very stressful situation and you will mistake anyway. Believe me I made them too and it’s a real pain to correct your mistakes or retouch something in post, you forgot to remove.
My credo is always to get the best image possible straight in camera.
– Dominik Berg –
