One light architectural shot

Its been a while since I've posted new blogs. Its been busy and I guess I didn't feel like I had anything to say. I also had a little social media burnout. Like all things technological, the depths of social media can swallow you whole if you let it. One thing I've learned in the last few years of the digital revolution is that there is always way more stuff out there than any of us can take on. There are gazillions of apps, programs, photo doodads, methods, professional requirements, and other cool stuff that demands our time, money and energy. Personally, I love technology and toys. But being a photographer is both a blessing and a curse. As photographers (and now film makers), we are blessed to play with the coolest toys....BUT...we are also required to buy all the coolest toys all the time. Any old guy will tell you about when you bought your film camera and lenses and that lasted you 5-10 years. Now we are required to buy new camera bodies every 2 years. With that, we must buy new computer hardware and software on the same timeline.

The same goes for social media and information. When I first discovered the Twitter world, I was amazed at all the information that was streaming onto my computer. I was learning about new photographers, seeing incredible work, reading blogs and Oh, all the BTS videos! God, I couldn't get enough of all the incredible information falling in my lap. But over time, the load started to get a little heavy in my lap and I had a hard time getting up to do my own stuff. So I turned off my Tweetdeck for a little while. Its been a nice break and now I'm coming back with a little more moderation. I do really love it and it just requires me to self monitor a little tighter.

I've got some new material and have learned quite a bit in the last few months. Today, I wanted to share a new technique that isn't new per-se but it is new to me. It is the concept of building an architectural from a composite of a bunch photos. I've always tried to light up my spaces as much as possible so I would have to do minimal photoshop work.  Due to time constraints, I was forced to step outside of my little box and try something new. I used one VAL(voice activated lightstand) to light up a whole room.

I recently shot a very cool residence near Durango. I will blog about the project in further detail in the near future. One day our shooting got somewhat delayed for several reasons and I found myself having to get two fairly critical shots in the waining light of late afternoon. The two shots were the master bedroom and the great room. We had a couple of issues in the master bedroom but got them fixed and were able to get the shot. We only had about 30 minutes to move into the great room, set up and get the shot before the sun set and lost our light. Normally I like to budget a good hour for set up, styling and shooting. One other factor against us was that the homeowners were coming home and they were bringing guests back to the house. I wanted to be done and out of the home so they could entertain their guests.

Knowing that there was no way that I was going to get this shot conventionally, I gave my assistant Hailey one of my WL 1600 strobes outfitted with a full CTO and a 30 degree grid and powered with a Vagabond battery. I then set up the camera, tethered to the MBP. Once I got a couple base images of the exterior and overall exposure, I then directed Hailey to move to different areas around the room and light stuff up. Here are a series of the RAW images of Hailey doing her magic.

And here is the final result once I put all of the pieces together.

Most of my masking was done by lasso tooling around the elements that I wanted to add. I worked at 300-500% magnification on making my selections. Other elements were added as a layer and then I simply erased the unwanted elements with a very soft brush to blend the layers naturally. Total time retouching was about 3 hours.

I could pick this photo to death on things that I wish were done better. But considering that this shot was made in 20 minutes (first shot was a 7:56 and the last shot was 8:16)while the homeowners were walking through the room giving their guests a tour of their home, I'll take it. I was pretty stoked to be forced to try something new and experiment with new techniques. I've shot like this a couple of times since then and gotten excellent results. Also, my post time decreased by about 40% on the other shots that I did. This little exercise gave me a whole new bundle of confidence in shooting spaces that I really struggled with in the past.