Whether you Airbnb, VBRO, or Homeaway, professional photographs can transform your property’s listing and increase occupancy.
Whenever I travel, I typically stay in hotels. Recently, I discovered the new craze when it comes to vacation rentals through sites like Airbnb and VBRO. I love real estate, interior design and architectural photography. Recently I discovered that this field isn’t really saturated with photographers so I decided to get some practice and build my portfolio in this area.
I started searching out through the various apps. In one case, one homeowner saw an increase of 39% in rentals after he had professional photographs taken. With this apart of my pitch, I reached out to a number of hosts on Airbnb and was able to get a few vacation rental photography shoots lined up.
Jacie and Justin were warm enough to let me into their beautiful vacation rental in Driggs, ID. Jacie designed and decorated the home. I fell in love with this home because of all the natural light that flooded the open concept floor plan. Here are some pictures of the outside of their property.
Living Room with Wood Burning Fireplace
Kitchen with Gourmet Appliances
Master Bedroom
On Suite Master Bathroom
Master Bedroom
Guest Bedroom
Kid’s Bedroom Over Garage
Second Bathroom
Sauna
Sauna
To read more about vacation rental photography check out this article.
Three cool examples of how special effects can make photography exciting, different and artistic.
Special effects in videos and movies are cool, but I personally like special effects in photography even more! Wherever you are, whatever you have, these three special effects can make your regular photos even better.
SPLASH
Macro water drops are one of my favorite things to photograph! Last semester, I dropped into the world of macro water drops (no pun intended) and recently, I tried at it again. When taking this macro water drop picture, I used macro tubes on my lens which increases the distance from the sensor to the subject. I actually changed the entire tones of the water to blue, then masked it out to reveal the original orange water drop.
SUGAR
With a super fast shutter speed I was able to catch the small sprinkles of sugar as they fell onto the strawberries. I love how in this picture there isn’t a heavy stream of sugar, yet a shuffle of sugar.
SPEEDLIGHT SATURATION
Using color gels with speedlights are fun and different! I love the first picture of Sam with the split lighting of the red and blue gels. The second picture I love the soft and subtle lighting on Janae’s face and the fur of her parka.
For more cool examples of special effects in photography, check out Megan Graham’s blog post on special effects.
How a speedlight can take an ordinary portrait and turn it into an epic portrait
Recently, I went with a group of BYU-Idaho students on a photo expedition to Bannack, Montana. While at Bannack, I was able to teach them about the awesomeness of a speedlight, specifically with a large rouge flashbender. As students rotated through my station, I was able to see the formula for making an epic portrait:
Expose for the background
Shoot into the sun!
Always start at 1/1 power on your speedlight
Adjust your flash settings before you adjust your camera settings
By the end of the last rotation, I could not believe how easy it is for a photographer at any skill level to turn a portrait into an epic portrait!
Only a few weeks prior to going to Bannack, I was able to follow these four steps in order to create some epic portraits of Jill Weaver:
Background Exposed – without Speedlight
Subject Exposed – without Speedlight
Epic Portrait – with Speedlight
Epic Portrait – with Speedlight
Also, take a look at more epic portraits I took of Baylie:
Epic Portrait – Baylie Madyson
Epic Portrait – Baylie Madyson
Epic Portrait – Baylie Madyson
If you want to see some more amazing epic portraits, check out photographer Sam Hurd’s Epic Portraits on Fstoppers.com
A quick and easy solution for any photographer to have studio quality lighting on the go.
One of the most important aspects of photography is lighting. Lighting is key to a picture because it helps in creating dimension and emotion. Even without lighting, photographers can achieve and take amazing pictures.
On my recent photography workshop in Victor, Idaho, we learned a technique that allows any photographer to get studio quality lighting on the go. Whether your a product or portrait photographer, this lighting technique is perfect for any mobile photographer.
Speedlights have become one of my main go to items in my photography bag. The power that you get from a speedlight is unmatched when you compare and consider the portability factor.
Speedlights are great for a mobile photographer because they can be mounted on stands, tripods, or even be hand held. Typically whenever I like to shoot, I prefer to have a lighting assistant as I am able to get better lighting from different, obscure angles.
However, having a lighting assistant isn’t always possible. Plus, I’m not a big fan of having a speedlight mounted on a fixed stand. When I shoot with a speedlight, I love to be able to change the position between each shot, and a stand makes it hard for me to do that when I’m alone.
If you’re a mobile photographer, always on the go, there’s an easy solution for you. My friend, mentor, and professor, Caryn Esplin taught us the magic of MTS: Mobile Triangle Snoot.
It’s important to mention that MTS is not meant to have a black background. MTS is meant to have shadows and highlights that allow the subject to be exposed while the background is tastefully exposed. Here’s an example of a product shot that I was able to capture utilizing the MTS method.
The best thing about MTS is it looks like you’re not even using an off camera flash. In this case, the reflection you can see on the front of the bottle is from the windows – not from the snooted speedlight. By shooting the speedlight we direct the light in combination with its power setting.
To wrap this post up, take a look at these two portraits I took of Caryn Esplin herself. The thing I absolutely love about the MTS technique is that it looks like I didn’t even use a speedlight, however, you can tell because of the great round catchlight in her eye!
A behind-the-scenes look into the process of taking a photograph to getting it ready to print… on glass. (Part 1 of 2)
Remember the fish picture that I took earlier this fall? Well, I thought it would be the best candidate to try something new and different in the photographic printing world… glass printing! When my friend and fellow creative Caryn Esplin first brought up the idea of printing on glass, I immediately knew that I wanted to try this method by printing the fish!
In my personal opinion, the final images that we share with others as photographers are far less impressive than what I like to call SOOC or straight out of camera. Here’s the image of the fish as I took it, SOOC:
The lighting method that I used to take this picture was called SQIBB also known as studio quality lighting with invisible black background.
One thing that I think a lot of photographers tend to miss when taking photographs is basic design principles. After getting a critique from my friend and fellow creative Gerardo Sumano, he suggested that the fish was a bit too close to the rocks and it needed more proximity. I then took the advice and moved my fish up off the rocks. I also rotated him a bit more to the left which encourages an upward direction and is complementary to the amount of lead room that is present. I wanted to keep the fish pointed to the left because it feels more balanced with that higher mound of rocks on the right side of the fish bowl.
After getting the fish photoshopped to where I want him, I always like to duplicate my file and create a final FPO, for print only version. By doing this, I’m able to adjust the lighting and change color profiles in a separate file from the photoshop file where I did most of my edits. Plus with this method, If I need to make a change on the photoshop edits, I can do so, then have them update with the changes I made in each separate FPO file for the different printers and profiles I might use.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of 2 as it goes over the glass printing process itself and includes pictures of the final product! Until then, check out some pictures of glass printing from Pinterest.
Create awesome photographs at night with light painting
One of the things that I love most about photography is showcasing the delicacy of light. Photography at night is one of the most difficult environments that a photographer can shoot in. With any long exposure photography, a tripod is a must-have.
One of the masters of light painting is Dave Black. As a sports photographer, Dave Black understands the importance of photographing movement. When you combine movement with light and long exposures, Dave Black creates stunning light painting photographs that are beyond jaw-dropping.
In homage to Dave Black’s light painting style, here’s an image that I took while on a photo excursion workshop in a Victor, Idaho barn. Armed with Yongnuo speedlights, 10 friends and I lined our tripods up inside this barn, turned off the lights, set our delayed shutters, and began walking around light painting the barn.
The reason I chose to show you guys this picture was because I love how it shows what light painting really is. Plus, I must admit Christine Taylor’s pose over to the left is pretty sweet as she flashes the person coming up the stairs with her awesome speedlight. (:
Light painting with people can be tricky, but if you add special effects such as fog and then top it with a creepy mask, you can get away with small movement that just adds to the photo. This was taken underneath that pioneer wagon you can see in the picture above.
Here’s another light painting of a shed on the same property. On this image, I actually placed an abstract light painting of a light orb that I took and made it look like an isolated set of star trails. Something that I want to point out about this picture is the two different color temperatures of the lights that were used to light paint this shed. The left side was light painted with an LED light while the right side of the shed was light painted with a halogen light. While most light painting is typically done with halogen lights, LED lights work just as well when it comes to light painting.
FAUX BOKEH
Bokeh, or background blur, is probably the most desired aspect when it comes to photography. By modifying the typical light painting technique, you can achieve this “faux bokeh” effect. First, you light paint the subject with your camera in focus. Then, you throw your lens out of focus using the manual focus ring and finish light painting the rest of the image. The hard part with light painting faux bokeh is to not paint over the same section in either round.
ABSTRACT
You guys should know by now how much I love abstract photography. What I love even more is when I can combine abstract photography with light painting. Photographing a light orb is super fun, yet is super challenging because you need to make sure you start your shutter at the right moment so you have a perfect overlapping light orb. Typically when photographing a light orb, you have a shutter speed of around 30 seconds. However, when photographing this light dome, I decided to get down on the ground of the barn and actually speed up my shutter speed. By speeding up my shutter, I was able to get some cool abstract shots which I then moved around in Photoshop and recolored to give a nice variation between these three.
Hi. I'm Alex Brown a creative designer who specializes in graphic design, branding, and photography. I'm graduating from Brigham Young University in Rexburg, ID, with an Associate's degree where I focused on mastering Visual Communication and Photography, I'm continuing my education at Utah Valley University where I plan to get a BFA in Graphic Design. I am from Charlotte, NC, and I currently live in the Salt Lake area.
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