Table of Contents
- When Is It Best to Use the Flambient Shooting Technique?
- What Equipment Do You Need for Flambient Shooting?
- How to Shoot Flambient Real Estate Photography?
- How to Edit Flambient Real Estate Photography
- Outsource Flambient Real Estate Photo Editing to PhotoUp
In the competitive world of real estate, standing out is crucial. High-quality photos can make the difference between a home that sells quickly and one that lingers on the market.
Enter flambient real estate photography—a technique that combines flash and ambient light to create stunning, true-to-life images.
In this article, we’ll share everything you need to know about flambient real estate photography – what it’s all about, what gear you need to shoot flambient, and how to do the final blending.
Let’s get started!
When Is It Best to Use the Flambient Shooting Technique?
Flambient photography shines (*pun intended) in situations where natural light alone fails to capture the property’s true essence.
This is particularly useful in spaces with mixed lighting conditions, such as rooms with large windows coupled with dark corners or when artificial lights cast unflattering colors.
Using only ambient light can make photos look natural but often causes walls to lose color and shadows to be too dark, especially in homes with limited natural light.
On the other hand, relying solely on flash can create unrealistic images, with unnatural shadows and uneven lighting.
By blending flash and ambient light, photographers can achieve balanced, visually appealing shots that highlight the property’s best features.
What Equipment Do You Need for Flambient Shooting?
The equipment needed to shoot flambient is pretty much the same as for regular real estate photography. To get started, you’ll need:
- A Good Camera: A DSLR or mirrorless camera with manual settings
- Lens: A wide-angle lens (16-35mm range) to capture entire rooms
- A Sturdy Tripod: Invest in a sturdy tripod for stability and consistent framing
- An Off-Camera Flash: An off-camera flash with a diffuser
- Light Stands: To position your flash strategically
- A Remote Trigger: To control the flash remotely
- Editing Software: Editing software like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop for post-processing
However, an even better option to save time and maximize image consistency is to outsource your editing to a professional real estate photo editing service like PhotoUp, which we’ll discuss more later.
How to Shoot Flambient Real Estate Photography?
Let’s now take a look at how to shoot flambient real estate photography, from the camera setup to capturing the ambient and flash shots, plus blending them together.
Step 1. Set Up Your Camera
To get started, set your camera to manual mode to control exposure settings. Then, adjust the white balance to match the ambient light for consistency.
Step 2. Capture the Ambient Shot
When capturing a room, rely solely on the natural light available. Avoid using flash to maintain the authentic ambiance of the space.
Aim to expose your shot in the middle range to achieve a balanced overall image. Shooting in RAW format is recommended, as it allows you to maximize the dynamic range during editing.
Think about the exposure as your main shot—ask yourself, “If I could only use this one shot for the final image, would it capture all the necessary details of the room?” This approach encourages you to focus on getting the best possible shot from the outset.
In rooms with high dynamic range, take a series of three bracketed shots. Start with the “if only” exposure at 0, then take additional shots at -2 and +2. This ensures you capture both the shadows and highlights effectively.
In PhotoUp’s flambient technique, the ambient shot usually serves as the foundation for your final image. However, some photographers may prefer using the flash shot as their base.
Choose the approach that best suits your style and the specific requirements of the room you are photographing.
Step 3. Add the Flash Shot
For the flash shot, the goal is to get a well-exposed image where the view out the window looks good, the interior is brightened by the flash and the walls have their natural color.
To accomplish this we recommend taking your flash off-camera and holding it 18 inches to 2 feet below a nice white ceiling pointing straight up into the ceiling.
You can leave the flash on the camera and get much the same look, but the closer the light is to the ceiling without being too close, the less likely you are to get flash-created shadows from objects in the room.
Your flash power will depend on how you have to expose to get a nice window exposure. The flash will not reach out the window, so expose it for the view and power up or down the flash to get the right interior exposure.
The main purpose of this flash shot for PhotoUp’s master process flambient style is to recover the natural color of the walls and objects in the room, so it’s important to bounce the flash off a white object in the room, usually the ceiling.
Step 4. Move on to the Window Shot
When capturing an appealing window view, consider taking a dedicated shot of the windows.
Set your camera’s exposure to the windows and use a high-powered flash aimed directly at the window frames. While this may seem unconventional, directing the flash at the window frames greatly simplifies the blending process during post-production.
Utilizing an off-camera flash is preferable for this technique, but an on-camera flash can suffice if it’s powerful enough and the windows are within reasonable distance.
Experiment with different angles to minimize flash reflections. If you manage to eliminate reflections, take an additional shot without the flash, ensuring you don’t alter the camera exposure.
By following these steps, you’ll achieve professional-quality window captures that enhance your real estate photography.
Congratulations! You’ve now successfully executed flambient real estate photography. The next step is to blend the images together using editing software to create a well-balanced final photo.
Have You Ever Thought To
Outsource Photo Editing?
Try it today with 10 free edits from three professional photo editors.
How to Edit Flambient Real Estate Photography
Editing flambient photos involves a few crucial steps. Here’s a quick overview before digging into the actual tutorial:
- Import & Organize: Import your shots into Lightroom and organize them
- Basic Adjustments: Correct exposure, contrast, and white balance for each layer
- Layering: Export the images to Photoshop and layer them
- Masking & Blending: Use layer masks and blending modes to seamlessly combine the ambient and flash layers
- Final Touches: Apply final adjustments such as sharpening, noise reduction, and color correction
How to Edit Using the Flambient Photo Editing Method
To show you how to do this, you can either watch the video tutorial or continue reading the text below:
Add Your Images to Lightroom
Step 1. To begin, add your photos to Lightroom. Mostly, these are composed of 2 exposures – a flash photo and an ambient photo.
The ambient photo should have correct exposure and balance overall. And the flash photo should also have decent exposure as it affects the color when it is too dark or too light when you are done adjusting time to move them to Photoshop.
Open Your Images in Photoshop
Step 2. Select the 2 photos, then right-click, and open them as layers in Photoshop.
Step 3. In Photoshop in the layers panel, make sure that the ambient layer is on top of the flash layer. (It’s recommended to name your layers to easily recognize them).
Step 4. The next thing you need to do is change the blending mode of the ambient layer to luminosity. This will retain the exposure of the ambient layer and show only the colors.
If you zoom in you will see the discoloration on the image due to the effect of the blending mode to the flash shadow layer.
Step 5. To fix this, all you have to do is add a blank new layer and change its blending mode to color.
Step 6. Then, by the use of the Brush Tool, select the surrounding color in the area and start painting on the part where the discoloration is visible. Make sure when doing this to not paint on the things that shouldn’t be painted on.
Step 7. If there is a window, then add masking to the ambient layer to mask the window view.
Step 8. And for the finishing touch, set your brush in zero percent hardness with 10-20% opacity and brush on areas that need recovery for the whole image excluding areas where the flash shadows are prominent.
This is to avoid recovering the shadows. Just brush it back if you happen to brush on the part where the shadow is.
Lastly, click save, and that’s how you edit flambient real estate photos!
By leveraging flambient photography, you can provide real estate agents with high-quality images that captivate potential buyers.
Have You Ever Thought To
Outsource Photo Editing?
Try it today with 10 free edits from three professional photo editors.
Outsource Flambient Real Estate Photo Editing to PhotoUp
Feeling overwhelmed by the editing process? Consider outsourcing your flambient photo editing to the professionals at PhotoUp.
With over a decade of expertise in real estate photography, PhotoUp is a trusted brand that’s been featured on some of the most well-respected real estate photography blogs/podcasts like the PFRE and Shooting Spaces, plus other big new stations such as NBC, Fox News, USA Today, and CBS.
PhotoUp can help enhance your images, ensuring they are both striking and true to life. Except for editing the flambient method, our skilled photo editors can help with the following issues:
- HDR editing
- Improper exposure levels
- Harsh shadows, lack of light, etc.
- Images that need cropping or other effects
- Color correction and image enhancement
- Lawn greening and sky replacements
- Noise reduction and ghosting
- Clutter and object removal
- Line and angle corrections
- And much more!
Our expert team can handle any photo editing job — big, small, or complex. And our rates are affordable too, starting at the low cost of $1.10 per image.
But there’s more…
A One-Stop Shop for Real Estate Marketing
Additionally, PhotoUp is a one-stop shop for real estate marketing and also offers additional services such as:
- Virtual house tours
- Video editing
- Virtual staging
- Single property websites
- Custom websites
- Floor plans
- Property flyers
- House portraits
- And Virtual Assistants
We have everything you need to enhance and market real estate photography in one user-friendly platform!
A Fast and Easy Ordering Process
The good news is that it’s extremely easy to work with PhotoUp.
First, sign up for a free PhotoUp account – it takes less than a minute.
When done, upload your images to our easy-to-use platform, select your export setting and turnaround time, and provide any other instructions.
When your photos are finished, download your edited images, and that’s it!
PhotoUp Real Estate Photo Editing Uploader Demo
Take a look at our real estate photo editing uploader demo to see how simple it is to get started with PhotoUp:
It’s really as easy as 1-2-3 to get your beautifully edited images returned to you in less than 24 hours!
So why don’t you try us out for yourself?!
Sign up for a free PhotoUp account today, and get 10 free credits you can use on any of our services!
We hope this blog post gave you some insights into what flambient real estate photography is, as well as how to shoot and edit flambient. Before you go, you may also want to check out the following resources:
