Elan II
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 p.2 #18 · What is this? D3 Banding or what? | |
Okay, sorry to take so long. Let me start at the beginning here: the lighting.
When shooting architectural interiors, the two sources of light you have to deal with are the ambient and your fill. The ambient breaks down into natural and artificial. The fill can be direct, diffused, bounced, diffused and bounced, and on the negative side, reflected. I think good architectural photographers strive for the most natural look they can achieve while maintaining quality, which in the ideal setting would meant that the viewer cannot tell that fill was used at all. That's the main goal of architectural interior photography. There are a few others. I'll describe those as they relate to your shot.
The main flaw with your shot is that you allowed the fill to dominate. It gives the room an unnatural look, you have some obvious hot zones on the forward ceiling and on the left wall. Your windows look dim and dull. You can see through the windows all the way to the other side of the street, which is distracting and taking away from the room itself. The chandelier lamps look excessively ember. The chandelier is also casting a major shadow on the back wall. You have posteriztion at the boundary between the fill and the ambient. These are all a result of a single issue, your lighting technic.
To address all of these, you need to allow the ambient light to dominate the scene. It's a bit of a problem since you're working with a single light, which is less than ideal. But it can still be done. You start with your flash off and set the exposure to blow the windows out by a half to a full stop. Next, identify your dark spots and address them with limited, soft light. This technic will give you a cheerful, bright look. The chandelier lamps will brighten, too. Shadows will be more balanced and diffused. The view from the window will be obscured by the brightness. The posteriztion will go away since the boundaries between the ambient and the fill will be more gradual and graceful. In this particular setting, I would have first attempted to bounce the flash from the upper corner of the right wall, about one third of the way from the rear/right corner. But you have to experiment to get it right.
Other issues with this image:
You are close to having plumb and level lines, but close doesn't cut it. Your camera should have been tilted down just a tad. Since it's not always possible to get the lines perfect via a viewfinder though, using a PS plug-in like Image Align Pro can correct the ones that got away.
Your staging is mostly well done. The chairs are properly aligned. The runner and basket on the table are centered. The rug is not skewed. Detail that was missed is having all the shades drawn to the same level, rolling up and tucking away the shade cords and wrinkles in the table runner. If it was me, I would also rotate the deer at the rear window 4-5" counter clockwise, for a better angle.
My last niggle is things that are there, belong there, but without which the shot just looks better. For instance, I always clone out A/C grills and smoke alarms. In this shot, the lone electrical outlet on the left wall is better removed than left.
One common issue I don't see in your shot is reflections. You controlled those well.
I'm pretty sure I covered the basics. If I remember something else, I'll add it in another reply.
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