Commercial Architectural photography for Kohler Kitchen and Bath Products
- At June 27, 2017
- By Johnny Stevens
- In Fine Art
0
Commercial Architectural Photography job:
I was asked to shoot this commercial architectural photography for Kohler Kitchen and Bath Products last week. Kohler makes high end and really beautiful products for kitchen and bath. This is Austin’s new Kohler showroom in Gateway Shopping Center. They are located just beside Crate and Barrel. These are a couple of my favorite images. I processed them by combining several exposures together in Photoshop. The images still were just so stark because the room and the product has so much contrast that I added a layer of Nik Filters Detail Extraction and lowered the opacity of that filter to about 30%.
Interior architectural photos of Kohler Austin new showroom
Interior architectural photos of Kohler Austin new showroom
Architectural Spot Lighting saves the day in student housing photo project
While shooting at NEIU in Chicago, I took the time to do some spot lighting on this scene. In this first image you can see what the camera sees and there are lots of lighting problems. The window is easily 8 stops hotter than the couches in the foreground. The windows are almost blown out and couches are dark. I could have fused 5 bracketed photos as I often do, but I wanted to test this approach to lighting.
The Nest at NEIU architectural photograph out of the camera image
I walked around and used a Canon 600 ex rt speedlite with no modifier on it to spot light 6 areas. I triggered the camera from my Ipad which was loaded with the Cam Ranger software. The camera had the Cam Ranger unit attached to the fire wire port. This gives me the freedom to walk around and spot light and change the settings on the camera or on the flash without having to walk back to the camera.
Spot lit scene of The Nest
Then I painted in those lit areas in Photoshop. Even with no modifier on the flash to soften the shadows, I ended up with a much more appealing architectural photograph.
Final image of The Nest with spot lighting done in Photoshop
Residential Real Estate Photography special technique
Though I don’t do much residential real estate photography , since I am so busy with commercial architectural photography, I was hired to shoot a home to be listed on MLS, and it immediately got a full price offer in just a day on the market. The living room of the house had a vaulted ceiling so to show as much of this room as possible, I chose to photomerge two shots in Photoshop. This require that I shoot one lower and one higher image. I can do this because when I shoot with my Canon 17mm Tilt Shift lens, it allows me to maintain the true verticals in the images, allowing Photohop to be able to merge the two images into one. This provides a nice wide shot but adds the dimension of height so the viewer can see lots more of the room. I hope this stacking approach helped sell this house for my EXP Realty client!
Real Estate architectural photography of vaulted ceiling living room
Vaulted Living room with 2 stacked images in Photoshop
Architectural images that take a bit more work in Photoshop
Some architectural images take a bit more work. Occasionally as a professional architectural photographer it is necessary to dive into Photoshop to do painstaking hours of retouching. Here is an example of one of those architectural images that requires just sitting down at the computer and digging in. Knowing the nuances of Photoshop helps. Here are some of those tricks. First a single exposure of the building right out of the camera.
1200 West Marshall UVA singe exposure out of camera
The after shot after fusing 5 exposures, cleaning up the wires and poles, adjusting color, cleaning up the pavement and replacing the sky.
1200 West Marshall after retouching
Telephone pole wires are easy but not easy. The look straight but they are not – they droop. With the spot healing brush set to just a bit wider than the diameter of the wire, if you click on an edge of a window or some type of hard edge and then click as far at you think the wire will be straight enough to be contained in that healing path, and click on a final spot that also has a clean edge, you can make lots of progress cleaning up wires – even wires that cross windows and other parts of the building. Invariably there will be spot runs like this that will not work and you just have to pull out the clone stamp tool and do your best to match the length of the wire. Telephone poles will need the clone stamp tool – they are too wide for the spot healing tool. The spot healing too works as a content aware tool so it is looking for information around it to replace the selected area. Unless your telephone pole is sitting right over a nice clean stretch of brick, none of the healing or content aware approaches will work. Replacing the sky in this image is not too tough because there are no trees poking up over the roof line. A clean roof line is easy to select and then drop in a new sky.
