Who Sees these Interiors?

First of all, the title comes from the opening line of the Manic Street Preachers song 'Interiors (Song for Willem de Kooning). That is the only tenuous link, nothing that clever. Interior work is something that doesn't often feature in my photography, and yet is a key area I want to focus on in future. I have always loved how interior shots lend themselves so well to HDR, and the lack of a sky means that the time of the day is not so important.

If there is any photography business I could see myself going into, it would be interior design. This is simply because there are plenty of hotels, bars, local businesses and houses that require good photographic work. The main reason though, would be to bring my own creativity to these buildings, and we all know that HDR in the UK is yet to have created a big impact in the business world, as HDR real estate photography has in the US. The French photographer Serge Ramelli is a particular inspiration here, and has some tutorials on shooting interior design (www.photoserge.com).

The photo above was taken at The Swan Hotel in Bibury about 2 and a half years ago, when my main camera was the Nikon D90. It is an HDR image, taken from 3 exposures, and was taken on a tripod, which is essential for interior design photography. It means that you can shoot at low ISO, and therefore create all the light you need for a particular scene, without having to deal with noise.

You can see the image as it came out of Photomatix below, before my layer-masking and retouching steps in Photoshop and Lightroom. I used Topaz Adjust as well, to bring out more detail, perhaps lost by the layer masking process. If you click on either photo, you can alternate quickly between the 2 in the lightbox, to see the before and after changes a lot better.