Back in the summer, Karen Seeman asked about shooting small rooms. Here are my top four suggestions.
Tips for Small Rooms
The biggest challenge of real estate/architectural photography is to take a 10x15x10, 3-dimensional room (1500 cubic feet) and create an accurate 4x3, 2-dimensional (12 square inches) representation. This challenge is magnified in small rooms. (Yes-I do realize the irony of using the word “magnified”). Over the years I have tried many things. Here are the tips which I have found most helpful, in order of importance.
- STAGE THE ROOM There is a computer-programmer saying GIGO; garbage in-garbage out. In other words, if you give the computer a bad program, or give the program bad information- you will get a bad result. If the room doesn’t look it’s best in real life, it WON’T look better in a photograph.
- A small room will appear even smaller if stuffed with clutter and too much or too-large furniture. Small bedrooms should be furnished AS bedrooms, not offices or playrooms. Put in a twin bed, nightstand and small dresser.
- Use neutral and monochromatic color schemes. This doesn’t always mean white. I am personally a big fan of sage green. I find it very relaxing. Would the stagers please chime in with color suggestions? By using one color-scheme in the room for the bedding and window treatments, you create unity-ONE room. So the eye sees one room, rather than smaller areas of bed, windows, etc. Use different textures and shades to create depth.
- Paint a receding wall. Read Judy Klem's blog for a better explanation. Short version; painting one wall a shade darker than the others will make it appear to recede, adding visual depth to a small rooms.
- Vacant rooms have no reference of scale and therefore, no depth. A comfortable chair with a table, book and a nice lamp will give scale AND create an inviting place-especially near a window or fireplace.
USE THE WIDEST POSSIBLE LENS Many point and shoot cameras will zoom out to 24 mm. If you can find one which zooms out to 17 or 18 mm, even better. For those using a digital SLR, you can simply buy a wide-angle zoom. I use a 12-24 mm on my Pentax. A previous assistant used a 10-20 mm on her Canon. Be careful though. Once you zoom wider than 12 mm, distortion becomes a problem.
GET INTO CORNERS Many photos I see are taken from the doorway. Get into the room and into a corner. Get as deep into the corner as possible. Holding your camera, rather than using a tripod will help you get back farther. Try to get three walls in the image if possible. If that’s not possible, get as much as one wall as possible. The corner of the room should be to the side of the image, not the center. In the photos above, I am in the corner. The doorway is to my right, in the middle of the room. Scroll over the photos to see the foacl length of each shot.
ANGLES CREATE DEPTH I mentioned the advantage of shooting on angles in a previous blog. When you shoot straight on, the image is often flat. This does not help when representing a 3-dimensional room.
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