The just-after-sunset look emphasizes detail in the structure and its surroundings. The light coming from inside is just beginning to glow and balances with the available light outside. The sky behind the location is still bright at the horizon and slightly darkens to blue near the top of the image. This is the natural and understated “Sunset” magazine look that comes from their staff photographer Thomas J. Story.

In contrast, the deep-blue-sky image emphasizes an impressive golden glow coming from within the structure combined with the aforementioned sky. Taken well into the evening’s twilight this version sacrifices ambient detail on the structure and surroundings but tends to grab the viewer’s attention more quickly. It’s eye candy, for sure: saturated colors, greater contrast, and an expressive gradient from light to dark in the sky behind the location.

No matter which kind of twilight you prefer, some locations work better than others. Generally, if the sun sets behind the location, then both the earlier or later twilight shot will be most successful. If the sun sets elsewhere, then we’ll have to work a bit harder on location and in post processing to give the sky more appeal. Of course, the other option is to try a sunrise shot, but those are more difficult to schedule here in western Oregon (a clear sunrise is difficult to predict until late spring, and by then the day dawns very early). Finally, if the sky is obstructed by trees or the like, then the earlier shot is the only choice.

Take a look at the slideshow below to see examples of earlier and later twilight images.

kitchen design by Deb Kadas DesignsSo what's the big deal? Portrait photographers routinely use a single image, and succeeed admirably. They have to, because people tend to move more than buildings. But architectural photography routinely uses multiple images layered and masked in Photoshop to solve the many lighting challenges a typical interior scene presents. The goal is the make the shot look like a single image. And after thousands of layered fixes, I can really appreciate the simplicity of one shot that needs nothing else. Well, I did add adjustments to contrast and fixed some lens distortion.

I credit the sucess of this image with the following:

1. an abundance of natural light which fills the rooms.


2. no windows are actually in the shot, which means all the natural light works for the camera.


3. there are five strobes placed throughout the rooms shown here, filling in where the natural light doesn't reach (like the stairway upper right).


4. newer Nikon camera profiles available in Adobe's Camera RAW software. Newer to me, that is. Updated profiles came out over a year ago but it wasn't until recently that I implemented them into my workflow.

I've been working towards the "single image" since I began shooting professionally six years ago, and have been getting darn close on a few gigs recently. This time, I got it. Hooray for me!

kitchen design by Deb KadasFor this shot, there were three “other” rooms visible through the doorway on the left. I used a strobe in each room and two accent lights on the back of the couch. After setup and some experimentation, I hit upon a combination from all five lights that didn’t draw too much interest away from the kitchen itself. It took longer to light that little bit than the kitchen itself, which took one strobe. All of the natural light coming from the right side did most of the work for me.

Last month I photographed the foyer at the Crowne Plaza Hotel (near the Lloyd Center and Rose Garden).  The project was for Back Lot Productions of Atlanta, GA, a company that offers retail design and brand development as well as something new: markitecture, or “strategic story telling through the built, graphic, and operational environments”.

In practice for the Crowne Plaza, this meant a renovation of the ballroom foyer, a large hallway between the three main ballrooms (or meeting rooms).  Formerly the foyer was a carpeted space with small groupings of wing chairs, end tables, and lamps, all tastefully decorated like a college faculty dining room or yacht club.  Back Lot Productions turned this large but usually empty space into something new, hip, and functional, more akin to an airport red carpet club.  So lots of places to plug in portable devices and work or just hang out.  The concept also was designed to make money for the hotel, letting patrons use the conveniently-placed iPads from which they could order food from the hotel restaurant or get food and drink from vending machines.

My job was to photograph the empty space before and after the installation.  As you can see from the slideshow below, the new space was an immediate success, evidenced by the number of hotel employees and guests who walked through while my client and I were setting up our first shot of the day.  Eventually my client had to tape off the various entrances to the foyer to keep the pedestrians out while we worked.

There are similar installations going into Crowne Plaza / International Hotel Group locations in Singapore, Shanghai, and London.  "Don't get excited," my client told me on our introductory call.  "You're not going to those places."   I had to laugh -- going to Portland for a photo shoot suited me fine.  I knew the project was going to be challenging, fun, and a success.

Less is more

The best photographers specialize

Oregon presents unique lighting challenges

Software alone does not make a pretty picture

Wider is not better

The issue will also feature the ad shown below (designed by Scott Alexander, editor of Willamette Living):

Advertisement in Willamette Living magazine April/May 2012

My main camera body since 2008 has been the D700, one of Nikon’s first full frame digital SLRs.  It came out around the same time as the D3 and shares the same sensor.  Both cameras use the 3:2 aspect ratio, which produces an image like that of 35mm film.

Horizontal pictures at the 3:2 aspect ratio look great, especially on devices that use a widescreen orientation (like most laptops, smartphones, desktop monitors, and flatscreen televisions produced today).  Portrait orientation pictures, however, aren’t as impressive in a widescreen format because the longest side gets squished to fit.  The Nikon D3 helped to solve this problem by offering a 5:4 crop factor.  The D700 unfortunately doesn’t have the same feature, or I’d have been using it for years now and wouldn’t be writing this post.  Now, like the D3, the D800 offers the 5:4 format but with far greater resolution.  Creating squarish images in camera that do not lose significant pixels is now possible. 

I've thought of replacing my D700 with the D3 to get the 5:4 format.  But there are two reasons why the D800 will likely be my next camera body.  First, according to Nikon, their goal with the D800 was not to just upgrade the D700 but to offer a dSLR that had resolution in the realm of medium format digital backs, which tend to have large and squarish sized sensors.  That means in 5:4 format, the D800‘s massive 36 MP image size offers plenty of resolution:  6,144 x 4,912 pixels compared to 3,552 x 2,832 for the D3’s 5:4 format.  Second, the D800 continues to use a compact body like the D700 (even a bit smaller, according to reviews), whereas the D3 and new D4 are battery gripped monsters.  The smaller body size of the D800 means no upgrades necessary for tripod, ball head, and camera bag.  

But, alas, the D800’s massive files will also force me to re-evaluate my desktop iMac for post processing.  It won’t have the power and RAM to chew through 36 MB RAW files and the massive Photoshop layered files that will result.  And I thought a quad-core i5 with 8 GB of RAM and a 1 TB hard drive was going to last for years!

So...the D800 will likely be my next camera body.  Likely, unless I switch to another system like Canon's.  But I've got too much invested in Nikon lenses for such a drastic change to make much business sense.

Chris Becerra, a Corvallis-based portrait and wedding photographer, teaches lighting workshops for portraiture at his downtown studio.  His brochure states, “if a photographer tells you he solely uses natural light it means he doesn’t know how to use flash.”  I’m paraphrasing a bit here, but his argument is spot on: a successful photographer knows how to light his subjects properly.  [Chris took my website headshot, by the way.]  The same is true for capturing buildings, especially so for interiors.  My job is to make a room look like it does to our eyes by adding to the available light, especially when it's grey and diffuse.

The slideshow example below shows an elegant kitchen remodel by Powell Construction of Corvallis.  It boasts new flooring, a spacious granite-topped island, new cabinetry, and attractive-yet-subtle lighting fixtures, opening up this once-cramped space.  To my camera, however, this remodel poses typical photographic challenges: a low ceiling height, dominant natural light coming from one direction, and a combination of dark wood cabinetry with bright granite countertops.  And, of course, on this day the sky outside was typical for February.

The first shot in the slideshow was 1/8 of a second, which was short  enough to capture the lighting fixtures without overexposure, yet not nearly long enough to fill the room with the available light.  The second shot shows how I used the low ceiling to advantage, as its uniformly white color acted as a giant reflector for my strobes, placed at four points around the scene to supplement the ambient light.  Again, this shot is a 1/8 second shutter -- still properly exposed for the lighting fixtures -- but result is much brighter throughout.  The last image is after RAW processing and my usual Photoshop adjustments for levels, lens distortion, sharpening, etc.

Gear: Nikon D700; 24mm PC-E; Speedotron Force 10 monolights; AlienBee AB-400; Nikon SB-800 Speedlight; PocketWizard transceivers

Here’s a kitchen I shot recently for Powell Construction: beautiful cherry wood floors and dark wood cabinetry with red paint on the opposite wall to compliment the spots of color in the tile mosaic backsplash.  Our preferred composition showed a bit of the red wall along the left hand side, along with some of the homeowner’s decorations.  Heather from Powell Construction, who designed the remodeled kitchen and staged the shot, asked if the wall could be cropped to help remove some of the decorations; they did tend to draw the eye away from the kitchen itself.  While cropping would be an easy fix, I had a better solution in mind: cleaning up the wall to make it plain and uniformly red.  

kitchen image before fixing red wall

So why not just crop?  First, cropping reduces resolution in the final image, as pixels are cut away from the file.  That may not make a difference for images used online or for smaller prints but it may affect the quality of larger prints.  Second, depending upon how it’s done, cropping can change the original aspect ratio of the image while reducing what is seen in the rest of the picture.  In other words, you get an odd-sized photo that might have removed stuff you wanted to see.  Lastly, cropping is usually an admission that the composition in camera wasn't optimal.

The solution for this image is readily handled by Photoshop, using a variety of tools.  First I moved over parts of the red wall from above and below to blank out the decorations, the light switch, and thermostat.  Next I used the healing brush and clone stamp to smooth out some of the obvious shifts in light and color.  Lastly, and here was the Photoshop magic, I made a color range selection of the red wall and then filled it with the same red color throughout; that made the wall uniformly red and removed all the artifacts from patching and cloning.  Although a color fill like this tends to remove any variation of texture or light, in this case it is a good solution because the wall is not the focal point of the image.  Viola!

kitchen image after fixing red wall

design by Broadleaf Architecture / photo by jenerik images photography

As you can see, the watermark identifies who commissioned the image (my client) as well as me as its creator. While it's true that anyone with a modicum of Photoshop skills can remove the watermark, the edit would take time to do correctly. The casual image thief won't bother. And if the image is hotlinked from houzz.com or Facebook, the double watermark gives both my client and me some measure of attribution. Hotlinking, by the way, is a way of embedding the location for an image rather than the image itself. If someone doesn't have a nice looking picture on his website, hotlinking allows a user to simply point to a place where it exists on the web.

Houzz.com is a prime example of how hotlinking works. The image below is one of my commissioned images hotlinked to my client's houzz.com profile. I didn't upload the image to this post. I simply linked to it. I'm not objecting to my client's use; not at all. But the way the image can be used does change my business a bit.

To clarify: I have no intention of preventing my clients from using whatever social media they wish for creating business. I will simply pass the cost for inadvertent and potentially unauthorized use onto my clients. The actual amount depends upon the number of social media sites intended for use, but I estimate adding 20-30% of the base price. I'd like to reiterate that this use is only for social media sites external to my clients' own domains. If you've got a blog on your own website, that's covered under First Party use. All I ask is that clients use the watermarked image in those cases (or use a caption like the one in the image at the top of this post). And, of course, using the watermarked image is not required for clients' own online portfolios.