Property Photography Penrith
This is Beech House in Glenridding, Penrith. The initial conversation is fairly typical of this kind of shoot. I tend to be contacted following a refurbishment of a property, or when there’s been a change of ownership, although a refurb is often the first job of a new owner. Generally, all the rooms plus a few exterior images. If it’s a hotel or B&B, then it may include any food offerings etc.
Beech House is a B&B and the inclusion of an image of the cooked breakfast was also requested. I tend to do the rooms first, as this gives the owners / staff time to prepare whatever meals are to be photographed.
I’m sure you’re familiar with HDR bracketing, although I’m talking about subtle blending that brings out more detail with in shadows and retains the details in highlight areas. Believe me, those neon retinal burning images that were once fashionable, don’t really help within the property photography sphere.
Anyway, let me walk you through my technique for the above image. At the time of taking these images, I was using an Olympus E-M mk11. I find the sensor size to be a boon for property photography, as with it having a micro four thirds sensor, the physics means the aperture at f8 is equivalent to the depth of field of f16 on a full frame camera. This effectively gives me two extra stops of light, which can be an enormous advantage. I’ve covered the advantages of the micro four thirds system in property photography in another blog post which you can read here.
I digress, sorry.
Basically, my camera is placed on a tripod at a little above door handle height, as I find this helps reduce distortion. My lens is the 12-40mm f2.8 set to f8 and usually at 12mm. Again, 12mm on m4/3 gives an equivalent point of view as 24mm on a full frame camera. However, the physics of a 12mm lens still apply, which is why we get a greater depth of focus.
The camera is set to aperture priority, electronic shutter (as it’s quicker), and then set to bracketing mode. This means the aperture priority system sets for the “base” exposure, whilst the bracketing setting automates the sequence. Very quick and very simple. And for those wondering, yes, I make use of a remote release.
I find the five exposures manage to capture enough detail to allow blending, even with fairly stark exposure differences being present within the frame. As you can see from the above image, the window is nicely exposed and compliments the room nicely. To be honest, HDR software can’t usually bring windows or other possibly extreme lighting issues under control. Here, the window is manually blended by simply selecting the frame and blending in from the bracket sequence image that quite markedly under exposes the room. Sometimes I need to bring the exposure of that image down further, as the darkest exposure from the bracketed sequence just isn’t quite correctly exposed for the exterior, and it remains slightly over exposed.
Two more images demonstrating how taking the time to ensure a good balance between the interior and exterior can make quite a difference to an image.
I mentioned at the start of this article that Beech House is a B&B, and this would be their breakfast. It really did smell incredibly good.