Hope you love this shot as much as I do. What an amazing photographer/person.
Architecture by photograph Julius Shulman
Thank you to Architecture Lens reader, Richard, for submitting this interior photograph, looking for some feedback. This is a very good start, with ample room for improvement.
First, I do enjoy the composition in regards to view into the kitchen and the fact that you are showing the three doors leading out of the space. Whenever you are revealing an open concept space such as this, it is always nice to show more. Meaning we want to see into the other rooms, not a lot, just a hint that there is more going on. You are doing the same thing with the couches in the foreground. However, it would be nice to see a bit more of the couches, or none at all. Right now it is at sort of an in between state between looking like you wanted to show them, and looking like you had to in order to fit the stools in the frame.
There appears to be an overall red cast to the image, I would certainly remove that from the white areas in post processing. The exposure is fairly flat right now. There appears to be window light coming from the left of the camera illuminating the room, but I would like to see a little bit more tonal change. The flat light is not helping the wood of the cabinets, I can’t see any texture. The stools are looking nice though.
One very important oversight is the lighting. The ceiling lights, accent track lighting. and hanging lights over the counter should be on and perfectly exposed. If the lights were on it would help to break up the frame a little bit so it wouldn’t appear so flat.
I would have photographed the scene as you have it, and then shot a dark exposure with the lights on, to combine later. However, the track lighting could have been used to your advantage if you turned them on and positioned them so they were accenting certain elements around that island counter top.
The styling overall is nice. I think that the window in the back through that door is just a stop or a stop and a half too bright.
Last, but certainly not least, because of the wide angle lens you are using, the image is suffering from lens distortion, barrel roll to be specific. You can see this is the door frame and cabinets on the left, and cabinets on the right: they are bending towards the frame edge. This can be corrected in Photoshop, Lightroom, or Adobe Camera Raw, whichever you are using for processing. The verticals then need to be straightened as well, right now they are slightly leaning. 30 mins of work and you could greatly increase the visual impact of this image. And the rest that you can change you can keep in mind when shooting next!
Thanks again for the submission, and keep shooting! I’d love to see more future results.
-CS
