A realtor from Coldwell Banker in Corona Del Mar contacted us recently to photograph a home he is putting up for sell in Redlands, CA. He mentioned his desire to showcase that the house had nice sunset views from various parts of the property, as well as a couple shots at dusk. To get the best possible light for both settings, we started the photo shoot an hour before sunset. Upon arrival, we noticed the front of the house had some nice light hitting it, and the sunset coming over the hill was fairly visible, so we took these shots:
Then we moved on into the house for some interior photos. We like to utilize the natural light that is coming into the house, but will often use a fill that comes from lights we bring to the shoot, or an off camera flash. We find it best to use a continuous light source rather than flash when working with HDR photos. Here are a few interior shots as examples:
One of the keys to shooting interiors is to make sure the lines of the room are straight. We usually line up our frame using walls, cabinets, or doorways.
After taking photos of most of the interior, we noticed that the sun was not far from setting, and so we went back outside to try to capture the best angles that showed the view:
After the sun is no longer visible, there is still about 20 minutes or so of light left, so we headed back into the house for more interior photos. When shooting photos at this time of day, timing is everything. It is important to keep a close eye on the falling sunset and to map out your shots.
Finally, we headed back outside to set up for the dusk photos. We set up power to the lights, and frame the shot while waiting for that perfect time to capture the photo. There is usually only about a 15 minute window of having that nice blue dusk sky before the it turns completely black, so the key is to move quick.
For this particular shot of the front of the home at dusk, two continuous lights were used. The lights were moved a couple of times to different areas, and later brushed in using Photoshop to cover the entire scene. Sometimes the exposure is long enough to brush the light in on the spot, which was the case for the pool photo.
All photos captured using a Nikon D700 with the Nikkor 14-24mm lens.
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