My living room prompts me to write a couple of words about indoors architectural photography:
To take architecture:
- Use a wide angle lens – 10-30mm on a crop SLR camera. That gets the rooms in.
- Not too wide though. If you shoot everything at 10mm, rooms will look huge, and people who see the home in real life will be disappointed. Underpromise and overdeliver is a good strategy.
- Focus a third of the way in – but when depth of field is not sufficient to get it all in, keep close objects sharp.
- Consider shooting from a lower vantage point. This makes rooms look bigger without exaggerating.
- Use bounced flash, if you use flash.
- Balance outside light with flash. Set aperture and shutter for outside, then fill rooms with flash.
- If that means slow shutter speeds, use a tripod.
- Keep the strongest verticals vertical.
- Compose to avoid clutter.
- Capture the feeling of the room.
Simple, really: these basic rules will make your architecture photos better. If you are bored today, and want a photo assignment: shoot your home indoors.