the dubai chronicles

nikon d70s, 12mm, f8, 1/100sec, iso200

photographing interiors were one of the most challenging tasks i encountered. when we were in maldives for a vacation, i tried to document everything including the villa we stayed in.  it has a porch with hammock and the villa was close to the beach… worth taking a photograph moment.

balancing exposures between the natural light and the interior can be difficult though. it was either you get an overexposed background with correct foreground or well-exposed background with underexposed foreground. the photo below is an example of something in between. the exposure of the room was somewhat underexposed and the background outside was blown out.

nikon d70s, 10mm, f5, 1/60sec, iso200

how will you balance it?

there are two ways: one is correctly exposing the brightest part of the frame and use strobes as fill. the other, take each exposure for background and foreground, merge it using photoshop and masking the underexposed / overexposed areas.

using the first one, i made a simple setup diagram for your reference.

if you have time for setup but do not have the time to post-process (especially if there are many) and want to practice balancing flash exposure, this is for you. however, if time is an issue to photograph a certain place, and space is very limited then the latter works well.

with a lot of practice and patience, you can turn your room shots similar to architectural/design magazines.

Tagged: architecture, interior, maldives, two lights