Elle Design

A few busy weeks of shooting business portraits, and other assignments. One of my jobs was to shoot for interior design company Elle Design at a house in SW Calgary. Luxury doesn't do the house justice. My mouth stood open for a few seconds when I entered the beautifully put-together home.

The formal dining room was first on our list to shoot. The sky was cloudy and rainy, giving me the perfect light. With the camera on a tripod, I chose to expose the room by about a +0.7 of a stop, and then feathered in the lights to fill in any shadow areas. This room was hard to shoot as the perfection I saw in real life didn't come through easily into the camera.

The kitchen was huge and I had a strobe set up on the far left of the scene to add light to the background that wasn't being lit by the window light coming in from the right. The color of the scene also needed a little bit of warming, so I gelled the flash with orange and that gave a warmer tone to the photos.

We headed into the living room and again, Elle Design had made a beautiful room. The colors, the fabrics, all came together in a wonderful living space. Here I set the camera up and over exposed the windows but didn't blow them totally out. I then set up lights to fill in the room and erase any shadows or dark areas.

The homeowner left the house to take the kids out to dinner and so the designer and photographer were left to pretend we lived in a place like this. Nice dream.