There are 3 types of lights used by architectural photographers, the natural light, flash lights and the ambient lighting. Photographers working for architecture clients, real estate companies or designers know how much it is difficult to manage the lights of an interior, for this reason we will consecrate this article to this issue.
Pros & Cons :
Pros : ambient lighting will add warmth to your images, they bring contrast and colors that can make boring spaces more interesting
Cons : turning the lights on will increase the exposure of a specific area, this might be overwhelming because the viewer’s attention will be detracted from the main subject. Furthermore the orange/yellow casts will most likely change the original colors of the furniture and walls around to an odd color.
Below is a series of 3 shots, the first one is with natural light, in the second one I popped a flash toward the ceiling, and the third one was taken with the recessed lights (wall and ceiling) turned on. The light cast by pendant lights above the table is inconspicuous, it does not affect the furniture and add a bit of interest to the image therefore I left them switched on deliberately.
This first shot with only natural light is quite decent, there is warmth on the left hand side, enough contrast and light to see all the materials and details of the room. But the right hand side seems a little flat.
This second shot has been taken to give back the details of the overexposed light ray on the left part of the image.
Shot taken with the ambient lights turned on, the image feels washed-out because I lowered the highlights to keep as much details as possible on the shelves. The problem here is that the right part of the image is overpowered by the lights and the color is just too distracting.
This image is a composite of the 3 shots above, with the help of the lighten mode, we were able to merge the ambient light with the natural light. The overall render feels more refined but the orange cast on the right is still too overwhelming.
In order to soothe this orange cast, the luminosity blend mode in Photoshop comes in handy, it blends the lightness value while ignoring the color information.
With this example – which I believe is a good representation of most cases – we can see that, shooting an interior without the lights will probably feel too flat or boring. On the other hand leaving the lights on will create a rather too predominant bright aspect. The best option would probably be to go 50/50, by taking multiple shots, with and without the lights, to be able to keep a good amount of light where we want.
