How would you light this?

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LowSociety

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Hi,
I will be shooting at this location soon, and would be grateful for any advice on how to light it.
The room is quite dark, and having done a shoot there before, I was disappointed in all the reflections I got back from the lights used to light a model in the bathroom area.
As the room is dark, from memory, I believe it may be difficult to bounce the lighting off other walls.

http://hullajukugirl.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/bedsmall.jpg

Any advice would be appreciated.
 
Personally, I would leave the light on, and go for a long exposure. However, you'd need to assess your white balance better. It looks warm, so likely the overall WB is tungsten.
If you are shooting for a hotel client (and I shoot for several), they tend to want to sell their rooms on ambience, rather than specification.
Turning off the lights means you are merely showing the contents of the room.
 
Incidentally, how do I know about the ambience thing? For each new hotel client, I tend to do a test shoot in a single room, and basically shoot one for spec and one for ambience. I then ask them to choose the image they feel represents their hotel.
The shot for ambience wins every time.
Well, almost. I had one hotel manager choose the spec shot. Did the whole shoot for spec and he oozed enthusiasm and all was well. I got a call about six weeks later from the hotel owner, asking why his hotel rooms didn't look as inviting as the other interior images he had seen of mine. After explaining the path of events, she thanked me.
Eight weeks later I got a phone call from the hotel's new general manager to arrange another full interior shoot.

These are quite old images now, but they still serve a purpose
 
If you're going to do as Michael suggests, you should turn the light on the left on too...
 
Thanks for the comments so far, though I must stress that the image in the link I provided in the opening post was not taken by me.
The photos I wish to take will primarily be of a male or female model, but naturally, I want the images to show their surroundings in the best way possible.
The only natural light comin into the room is from a relatively small window in front of the bed, so there isn't a great deal of ambient light entering the room.
I'm particularly concerned about how to avoid reflections from the tiled surfaces around the bath and shower areas.
 
One thing you could try is keep your camera on a tripod and create composite shoots with differing lengths of exposure etc. That would leave you limited in your interaction with the models though.

You could also try to hide speedlights with e.g. warming gels to create your own ambience. This way you can also control the reflections. There are tons of things you can do to build your own strobe setup, whilst completely disregarding the continuous room lights.
 
The name of the game here is to give the impression of natural light. Sometimes, natural light is all that's needed, sometimes you need to add (hidden) flash guns, .to light dark areas or you may need a large softbox out of shot to simulate a large window.

As for reflections from shiny surfaces, it's just a matter, as always, of arranging either the lighting or the camera position or both - remember that the angle of reflection always equals the angle of incidence, so the light or the camera must be positioned so that reflections don't bounce straight back at the lens.
 
Wow just had a mooch at your interior images they are simply stunning.
I would stay in any of them rooms off your pictures.
I'm just a happy snapper but it would be nice to take images like yours of the places we stay at. "well in a similar but amateur way"
Are they shot as we see ambiant + the table lamps and no spedlights?

Gaz
Michael Sewell said:
Incidentally, how do I know about the ambience thing? For each new hotel client, I tend to do a test shoot in a single room, and basically shoot one for spec and one for ambience. I then ask them to choose the image they feel represents their hotel.
The shot for ambience wins every time.
Well, almost. I had one hotel manager choose the spec shot. Did the whole shoot for spec and he oozed enthusiasm and all was well. I got a call about six weeks later from the hotel owner, asking why his hotel rooms didn't look as inviting as the other interior images he had seen of mine. After explaining the path of events, she thanked me.
Eight weeks later I got a phone call from the hotel's new general manager to arrange another full interior shoot.

These are quite old images now, but they still serve a purpose
Click to expand...
 
cargo said:
Are they shot as we see ambiant + the table lamps and no speedlights?

Gaz
Click to expand...

Mostly, although occasionally I will stack an image, which means I would light different areas on different images, all taken with the camera imobile on a tripod. I then stack them as layers in photoshop and mask out the unwanted areas from each frame. This is great if there are differences in white balance between one area, such as a bathroom seen through an open door with fluorescent, and the bedroom that has tungsten bulbs. Each area can be adjusted for white balance and merged.

Occasionally use HDR too, but very, very softly, so as not to sear the retinas of the hotel managers :D
 
Thanks Mike.
All makes perfect sense.

Gaz
 
I would block out the daylight from that window, it looks wrong to me.
 
Steve T said:
I would block out the daylight from that window, it looks wrong to me.
Click to expand...

It looks wrong due to the white balance being different for the window than the rest of the shot. Easily sorted with a "stack" approach mentioned above.
The image may look just as odd with no light at all from the window. I tend to find things can start to look a little unbalanced once you start blocking windows etc, as the room takes on a different ambience.
 
True, but to me the lamp light gives it an evening cosy look and the daylight seems at odds with that.
 
Steve T said:
True, but to me the lamp light gives it an evening cosy look and the daylight seems at odds with that.
Click to expand...

Which is why, when you stack the image and match the white balance, it no longer looks at odds, as it matched

Honest :thumbs:
 
Or gel the light in the first place to match the colour temp. Stacking is not necessary if you light it right in the first place. To give some accurate ideas, what are you wanting to do with the model. are you looking to isolate them with light , add some ambience or just go with the room look. Loads of info on lighting the room here but all avoid the original question..
 
GDHphotography said:
Or gel the light in the first place to match the colour temp. Stacking is not necessary if you light it right in the first place. To give some accurate ideas, what are you wanting to do with the model. are you looking to isolate them with light , add some ambience or just go with the room look. Loads of info on lighting the room here but all avoid the original question..
Click to expand...

Not sure which light you mean, as stacking was in reference to no additional lighting.
Obviously, if additional lights were to be used, then gels would be a worthwhile step, but would still throw up differences between the window and the room as mentioned previously
 
A window that small I would gel the glass, a 6 inch step to the left would lose the sight of it... But the OP asked for lighting a model in there, not to just light the room so stacking even with the available light in the room is no good...
But again, back to the op... what effect on the model are you wanting.
 
Definitely agree with Michael here. Natural light, white balance=win

You could also try multiple exposures and then a manual blend to build atmosphere.
 
Has anyone mentioned stacking yet? :D

I'm loving the room - what a great location.
 
GDHphotography said:
So you would use the light in that room to light the model in the bathroom? Either a tiny bit of natural through the window or the halogen downlighters !
Click to expand...

Not really. If you notice the OP was a request on how to "How would you light this", which is what the advice from several members was based on, including my own.
However, [user]LowSociety[/user] came back with further information, including the fact there would be a model involved. Hence, this thread has a somewhat dual track approach with regards to what's being shot, and how it should be shot.
 
JonathanRyan said:
So one of those irregular verbs that as so common in photography then.



:geek:
Click to expand...

'fraid so,
Focal stacking is another one.
As for my own use, I can use stacking to light a double decker bus with a single speedlight and multiple exposures. In this instance it's not the dynamic range that would concern me, but the effective overall lighting of a large object with a small(ish) light source.
 
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