How is Architectural Photography Different?

 Architectural Photo Shoots 

Emily took me to two photo shoots- one was for a home stager and another for a realtor. A home stager is someone who displays the furniture and accessories in the home. The goal of staging is to make a home appealing to the highest number of potential buyers, thereby selling a property more swiftly and for more money. The home stager, Misty, wanted detailed shots of the furniture and vignettes to add to her portfolio. The realtor, on the other hand, wanted wide shot photos of the house and room so that potential customers could see the whole house. 

During the photo shoot for the home stager, I learned about lighting and composition of a photograph. Emily taught me how to use flash lighting to get rid of shadows in the rooms. We would light up different sections of the room at a time and later layer these photos in Photoshop to create the perfect photo. She also showed me how to use a tripod to capture a perfectly spaced photo. A tripod is very important in architectural photography especially because you need to make sure to get the same exact photo multiple times so that you can layer them in Photoshop, so the tripod will keep the camera from moving. Misty needed photos that showed her creative work, so the photographs Emily took were more focused on the flow and details of the furniture rather than the whole room itself.



After that photo shoot, Emily and I went to go take photo for a man who was putting his house up for sale. This shoot was different because instead of taking detailed photos of the furniture in the house, we were focusing on capturing the functionality of the rooms. When we took photos of the room we used a large lens (17 mm) so that we could capture the whole room. The large lens also made the rooms look bigger and farther away, which gives the house the appearance that it is larger than it actually is (this will appeal to buyers). The purpose of this photo shoot was to capture not only all the rooms themselves, but also do it in an appealing way that will influence how potential buyers see the house.