Little things mean a lot

I was taking pictures today of a room in my aunt's home.  We had done quite a bit of work and i wanted some good pictures for family and friends to see how good her house looks now.  In the course of looking at the pictures later I realized that, as always, some of the pictures were better than others.  This room was hard to shoot for several reasons. 

The biggest problem is a giant 12 foot wide by 6 foot high picture window.  I didn't want to close the blinds because I wanted to get some of the outdoors into the room.  The light was great but there was too much of it and it overpowered the shot.  If I stopped down to tame the window, then the room was too dark.  The on camera flash made too many harsh shadows in all the wrong places.  One other problem was the small amount here and there of clutter.  Each table and the desk had a few pieces of paper and scissors, and old mail etc...strewn about. 

With a small amount of de-cluttering, and help from my talented wife in artfully placing a few plants, pillows, magazines and throw blankets here and there, the room looked magazine ready.  Add a few off-camera flash units to light the corners and the finished product turned out good.  What's the moral of the story?  If you are shooting a room spend the time to look hard around, move clutter, dust and vacuum if you need to.  Think about lighting, shadows and color.  Even with a cellphone or point-and-shoot camera, the room can look a lot better with a little thought and some staging beforehand.   

Here are a couple before and after shots of the room.  The changes are subtle but important.

Click on any picture for a larger image.

Not bad, but the window is way too bright and there is some clutter on the table.  A lamp is out of place and some of the shelves are cluttered.

Almost the same shot just a few minutes later.  I took a step or two back, tamed the window light a little bit by using a smaller aperture.  My wife moved the lamp, added a candy dish and some pillows.

 Same as the other view.  This is before the "tweaking"

 After the "tweaking" notice the subtle changes.














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