It was forecast to be hot, hot, HOT this week. It was bad enough over the weekend, with temperatures into the 90s (getting to mid-30C and hotter for the international reader) when we were away in Athens for the wedding. There were predictions are for even more heat in the coming week and it continued all week. At night the temperature didn’t really drop either. And no rain apart from a couple of brief thunderstorms. They don’t really do much good for the garden, dumping up to an inch in half an hour – most of the water just rushes away (and does the already rough driveway no good at all).
On Thursday, the photo shoot for the third and final article in the “Reality Build” series in Designer Dream Homes magazine was scheduled. So all week, we were busy preparing the house for its big exposure. Lots of little jobs like hanging pictures and other decorations. Purchasing flowers and fruit that could be artfully arranged to make the whole place look cool, sophisticated and beautifully furnished (but not fussy). Decluttering and cleaning.
We had been provided with a few instructions (such as remove personal photographs and portraits) but threatened that the photographer would probably move many items about to “stage” the house anyway. And sure enought, the two of them did a fair bit of shuffling. But they were very complimentary about how far we had decluttered – they had plenty of horror stories about shoots where they had to take pictures before moving anything so that they would know how to put everything back properly, or where they had to go in for some basic cleaning before they could photograph the kitchen.
They arrived at 11am (shortly after our architect, who also wanted to take some photos himself). The day was horribly hot, but they all just ploughed on taking mostly interior shots. The architect and his son left after an hour, whilst the two magazine photographers kept on for three hours before taking a break.
After their two hour break to go and check into their hotel in town, they were back to do the dusk and dark shots, starting inside and then working outside until well into the total dark. The seemed very pleased with their eight or nine hours work, and showed us some examples on the display screens of their camera – the picture looked a little garish to me, I suppose from the various filters they were using – but I assume this is how they want things to start on the post-production photoshopping. They decided that they didn’t need to come back in the morning for dawn shots, and off they went.
We were told that the results should be ready for real viewing in mid-July, and the magazine with the article about the house (including a picture occupying the whole front cover) in October. We await with interest.
We learned a number of tricks about how to photograph a house, such as
- Full daylight is a problem because external light bounces off woodwork and creates glare.
- Ordinary flash is also a no-no because of reflections, you have to use a white umbrella reflector.
- The best time for taking pictures, both inside and out, is at dawn and dusk as the light creates a three-dimensional impression.
- Don’t worry if your garden doesn’t look perfect – it will probably be photoshopped to look like you employ an army of gardeners clipping the lawns with nail scissors.
- And for high impact photographs of the exterior, shoot as dusk turns to dark with lots of carefully positioned spotlights.