Tips on Photographing Interiors

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Whether you're shooting St. Mark's Cathedral or your own living room, photographing interiors comes with a few challenges: lighting, angles, white balance, lighting. Yes, I said lighting twice, and if you've ever tried to take pictures of an interior before then you'll know why. If you're having problems shooting indoors, here's a list of some of the most common ways to improve your interior shots.

Go Wide

Most interiors don't offer a lot of room to work with so you're best off using a wide angle lens. Shooting in the corner of a room often works best as you get the full view of the space. But be careful not to use a fisheye or wide lens with too much distortion. You want a wide view, but you also want an accurate one as well.

Make Use of Ambient Light

Sometimes the overhead lights and lamps may not be enough to show off how an interior really looks. Always look for windows, doors, or skylights that you can let light through and brighten up the room. A well-lit room always looks much more appealing than a dim one.

Recommended Cameras:

Nikon D500 | Nikon D3300 | Canon EOS Rebel T5 | Sony A7RII | Canon 7D Mark II

Many famous buildings and structures rely heavily on natural light for illumination. You may want to check out a location at different times during the day to see how the light changes. For example, many large churches have stained glass windows that will create colorful patterns over the floor at certain times of the day.

Use Flash

When you don't have very much natural light to work with, try using a flash. How you use it will depend on the size of the interior you're shooting. If it's a single room like an office or living room, bouncing the flash off the ceiling will provide a very wide even spread of light that appears natural. However, if you're shooting a large space like a church or library, the light falloff from your flash could be very noticeable and cause a bright foreground and dark background.

Also be aware of using your flash in public places. There are certain places that do not allow flash inside the building as it is disturbing or they do not want others taking professional photographs of the place.

Adjust White Balance

This is a big one. Always check to make sure your white balance is correct when shooting inside. There's almost nothing that will make you look more like an amateur than having incorrect white balance. Artificial lights have different color temperatures ranging from cool (blue) to warm (red). All cameras should have settings for incandescent and florescent lights. Most cameras have more options than these and some even let you customize the white balance, which is where a white card would come in handy.

NIKON Prime Lenses CANON Prime Lenses SIGMA Prime Lenses
Nikon 24mm f/1.4 Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II Sigma 24mm f/1.8 EX DG
Nikon AF-S 50mm f/1.4G Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM Sigma 35mm F1.4 DG HSM
Nikon 35mm f/1.4G Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM
Nikon 85mm f/1.4G Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II Sigma 85mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM
Nikon 300mm f/2.8G AF-S ED Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS Sigma 300mm f/2.8 EX DG IF

Shoot Up High and Down Low

If you want to show off a room for, say, a real estate website, then shooting up high will give the viewer a good overall view of the room. You don't want your view of the space to be blocked by furniture. Also, shooting up high in a corner of the room is about the farthest you can pull back to view it without putting your camera through a wall.

 

 

If you're shooting a very large building with beautiful architecture and high ceilings, consider shooting lower than eye-level. This works particularly well if the space is more or less empty as it will give the viewer a different perspective than the norm and will better convey the vastness of the place.

 

Also Read: 23 THINGS YOU MUST KNOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN PHOTOGRAPHY

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Image credit: iriana88w / 123RF Stock Photo

Written by Spencer Seastrom