Property Photography – Vampires have it easier

I was recently asked by the owner of a building company to take pictures of Pilates Studio that his company had just finished. He needed some high end property photography as promotional material for his website.

When he briefed me, he did mention that there is a mirror in the room. He was not wrong, as one whole wall was a mirror ?.
The studio was built in the loft of a private residence. All the equipment was very high end and I was tempted to have a go myself.

In property photography, even in these ‘selfie-times’, to show yourself or your camera equipment in a photo is frowned upon. Vampires have it so much easier… (and as a side note, if you have not seen the movie ‘What we do in the Shadows’ yet, make sure you do soon).

There are a few tricks you can use in Photoshop in order to get rid of unwanted subjects (such as a tripod and a camera). You could ‘fake’ the reflection by taking a picture 180 degrees the other way and lay it over the original picture. In this case it was easier to clone over the tripod and the camera. It also helps to have a remote trigger to not have to clone out the photographer too.

I often have requests to ‘photoshop’ something out and I can sense that the customer thinks it is a 2 second job. Sometimes this might be true, but more often than not the work involved is much more time consuming then one would expect (if you want it to look like a real fake).

Have a look at the below before and after editing the shots. My customer was very happy with the result.

Find more of my property photos here.

Before:

Property Photography with mirror (before)