Hey there real estate photographer! How do you light up a large room with your off camera flashes?
Well, you could try and get it all in one shot by carefully hiding your flashes out of the way (either behind furniture, or out of the frame), but that can be tricky and it may not give you the best possible result. For example, this could lead to ugly shadows forming from that light you placed near a lamp, or perhaps it leaves one whole wall dark and ugly.
You don’t want that.
So what can you do when you want to light up a large room? For example, you could place three flashes in different areas lighting up the room, but that might result in a few of those lights being visible in the photo. Or at least it could leave some hotspots visible.
Again, that’s not something you want to see.
One way around this is to take a photo to light up one side of the room, and then take another photo to light up the other side! Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. 🙂
What I do is I set up the lights for one side, and then I reposition my lights to shoot back to where the lights were for the first shot. So it’s like I cut the room in half, and light up one side of the room at a time.
But what if you have a really, really big room such as a large commercial office space?
I would look at breaking that kind of space up into four or more different spaces, and target one space at a time. There’s no rule that says you have to get it all in one shot – I give you permission to set up different flashes in different areas, and light up 1/4 of the room at a time. Not that you need my permission, of course. 🙂
Does that make sense?
It’s really fairly simple and obvious once you get the hang of it. So here’s a video I put together where I explain how I go about photographing a large room with multiple flashes:
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Links:
The Real Estate Photography System – free training videos
Watch the above video on YouTube: Real estate photography: How to light up a large room