House of mirrors - photographing bathrooms

Shooting bathrooms is some of the most trying and complicated shots one has to do on architectural shoots. There are plenty of factors that can give you a headache.

1. There is no space to work in
2. Since they are so small, they require a wide angle lens, which in turn reduces the options for placing lights or reflectors
3. Bathrooms are constructed of shiny tile and glass. Lots of reflection everywhere!

Today, I'm breaking down a shot that I did last year of a bathroom.  It wasn't one of the worst I've had to work in, but it did have its share of issues to complicate things. The builder who I was shooting for wanted the room to appear bright and airy. He also wanted to highlight how the bathroom placed the homeowner in the natural environment that surrounded the house. In the end, it wasn't perfect and it had some flaws, but the client was happy with what was produced. Here is a scouting shot of the bathroom.

Here is a shot of the exterior of the house. It is literally built into the cliff. The engineering to support this structure was pretty impressive! The bathroom is on the lower level on the left corner of the house closest to the camera. BTW, to shoot this shot I was on a sky lift hoisted up about 40-50 ft in the air...and I was still looking up at the house!

PROBLEMS
The house and bathroom faced east. There were a lot of dark pine trees outside which made the room fairly dark.  If I shot it with a well exposed exterior to show the natural environment, the room went completely dark. Conversely, if I exposed for the interior, the exterior view was blasted out. That's pretty typical of any interior shot, unless it has big windows on all sides of the room, has extensive lighting or it is fairly dark or overcast outside. My other big issue was that there were windows in the corner of the room and a glass surround for the shower. This would easily show reflections of my strobes. This second problem made it more complicated to use a bunch of strobes to light up the interior of the room to match the exterior exposure, especially big umbrellas or soft boxes that replicate natural window light.

Here is the final shot.

PROBLEM SOLVING
One light source that typically looks natural in all scenes is the sun. I chose to use it as my main light source and then fill in the shadows with my strobes. Since the room was located down low in the forest and the path of the sun would put the room in shadow for most of the day, I had to shoot the photo at sunrise. The sun rose right between two trees and provided natural light to the whole bathroom. The benefit of this was that it highlighted the trees outside (natural environment) and created great texture on the different features and fixtures in the room. Since the colors of the tub, tile and rock are all fairly light, the room was pretty evenly lit with the reflected light. Yet, the back lighting did also create some deep shadows on the surfaces facing the camera. Since there is glass everywhere, I couldn't put up a big foam coare or reflector to reflect some of that beautiful light back into the scene. And as stated before, I couldn't put strobes with diffusers up for the same reason.

Fortunately, off to the left side of the scene is a hallway from the bedroom. This allowed me to put a strobe bounced into a umbrella there to highlight the stone steps into the tub. BUT...I had to set it low because the two windows in the corner basically reflected any strobe in the room. The hallway strobe, like all of my strobes, had a light straw colored gel on it to match the warm sunrise light. I also had to scrim the side closest to the stone wall so as it wouldn't be blasted.

The other dark area is the shower surround. This is where battery powered strobes come in really handy. You can place them in a shower and you don't have to deal with a cord running out of the shower and over to the outlet that is on the other side of the room. This shot didn't have that problem because I cropped out the bottom of the shower. I could have easily ran a cord out and it wouldn't have been seen. Either way, I used one of my Dynalite 400 Jrs with a Jackrabbit battery placed on a small Bogan 5 piece stand. This light combo is great for putting strobes in small places because the stand has a small foot print and can placed deep in corners. This is also a great place for a 550EX or speedlight to be used. Again, I used the light warm colors of the tile in the shower to act as my color modifier for the strobe. I bounced the Dynalight against the shower wall not seen by the camera and it put a warm fill on the rest of the surround.

I originally turned the TV on to show that you could watch TV while sitting in the tub. Since I chose to shoot with the bright sunlight coming in, it reflected too bright to show anything on the screen. This turned out to be fine because the client felt it was more important to show the natural light coming in and all the exterior environment rather than somebody's ability to watch TV.

As you can see in the finished shot, there is a door that opens to the deck. Doors in bathrooms are saviors for a couple of reasons. First, they allow you to open them, and placed at certain angles, eliminate reflections. In this shot, the door going outside reflected the camera when closed. The door to the shower reflected the bright stone TV wall and killed the detail of the interior of the shower. By opening both doors, I was able to eliminate reflections in a matter of seconds. A trick to holding doors open exactly where you want is to use a used ball of gaffers tape pushed down at the floor or near the hinge to keep the door from swinging closed or all the way open. Second, an open door is inviting. The viewer is instinctively drawn to see what's on the other side of that door. Open doors invite people to explore different aspects of the photo that they may pass over if it was closed.

Some would ask, why not just shoot the interior and photoshop the windows. Yes, I do that. Quite often in fact. But I'm kind of old school in the notion that you have to get the best possible shot in camera and then take it into post. Many times, a small change that takes 20 seconds on location can save 20 minutes of photoshop work.

Here are some more tips to shooting bathrooms

• Use smaller light sources such as a strobe with a grid. They take up less space in the tight confines of a bathroom and are easier to hide in reflections. Also, if it comes down to photoshopping out reflections, a small one is easier than a big one. 
• Have bright colorful towels that compliment the bathroom. Many times homeowners have white or drab towels that look nice but look plain in photos
• Its good to bring glass cleaner on a shoot. Clean for a homeowner or cleaning crew never seems to be clean enough for photography. Use cleaners that take hard water stains off.
• Do yoga. Often your camera is pushed in a corner and strobes are placed in the doorway, forcing you to contort yourself to see the viewfinder and do limbo moves to get in out of the bathroom. Flexibility is your friend.
• Like all lighting in photography. Start with one light, get it right and then continue to build your lighting. Its way tougher to throw up 3-4 lights and then figure out how to solve all of the problems that they are all presenting.
• Think outside of the box. Keep an open mind of how to deal with the multitude of issues you may confront.
• Have a good attitude that you are going to be a lot smarter after you finish shooting the bathroom in front of you. Have the attitude that you are going to solve all sorts of problems and devise some cool new tricks to put in your toolbox for next time. 

Have fun and good luck!