how to properly light/expose exterior architecture

[petrovski]

I have taken the jump into architectural photography (canon 5d with 24mm tilt-shift and 17-40mm) and want to make

the most of it. I've been trying to shoot exterior houses in my neighborhood for practice during the evening. My

greatest problem is balancing exterior light with the yellow glow from the windows lit by interior lights. I'm

getting shots that are over exposed either in the sky or the windows, and nicely exposed facade. How do you

balance this? I want that nice

blue evening sky with yellow windows, neither or which should be blown-out. Do I use flash? Multiple flashes?

Graduated neutral density filters? Any suggestions are appreciated.

Also, are there any books you would recommend on the topic of exterior architectural photography?

[brooks short]

Set your exposure for the windows. I usually use 500-1000watt totalight quartz tungsten lights bounced in the rooms with exterior windows. If the rooms with windows have enough interior lighting you might only need to do this in a few of the darker rooms.

 

With your exposure set for the light in the windows, wait for the sky to darken to the blue tone that you want. It helps to be shooting towards the east, north or south. If you are shooting to the west towards the sunset you might not get a rich blue until the sun has been down several minutes and by then it will be dark outside. You might get a nice warm sunset sky when the sun has slipped behind the house.

 

The problem with this exterior dusk photography is when the building has no exterior lighting. If that's the case it will be difficult to see the facade of the house without adding some exterior landscape lighting. You could place small flashes with radio slaves on the ground shooting up to light the exterior but usually that's something the client doesn't want to deal with or pay for. So you really do need some already existing exterior lighting on the building.

[petrovski]

Thanks for the reply Brooks. I will try your suggestions tonight.

 

However, I still need some more advice. As am I new to flash photography, I need advice about exactly what kind of

lighting equipment I should consider (portable) to help me light exterior architecture. Off the top of my head, I assume

two (maybe three) flashes sync'd wirelessly to my camera that would all fire at the same time for a custom exposure

would work...but I have no clue exactly what gear I need? Help. Please provide exact gear make/model to help me

begin researching and choosing options. Suggestions for alternatives are also appreciated. Again, I need this lighting

gear to work with a canon 5D and 24mm tilt-shift and 17-40mm. Thanks.

[brooks short]

If you wanted to use flash as exterior lighting, any battery powered flash that can be set to a manual exposure and adjusted for different power levels would work. Synch them to your camera with a radio slave such as Pocketwizards. Vivitar 285's would be a good choice. You'll have to use manual exposure so a flash meter would be helpful or you can chimp on the lcd screen of your camera.

 

Perhaps an easier solution would be to buy a string ot two of actual low voltage landscape lights from Home Depot or Lowes. Get the brightest ones you can find that have an attached stake for sticking into the ground. You can aim these up at the outside facade of the house to create pools of light.

 

As always, shooting tethered to a laptop is very helpful for judging separate exposures in these situations. At dusk the laptop screen is very easy to see.