I shot the houseboat below for a client recently and a couple of images stood out during the shoot that are interesting in a photographic sense.

The first is this fun exterior with the Aurora bridge. Nothing technically challenging with this, but I like the way the bridge overhead and reflected below frame the house nicely. Shot with a 24-70 lens at 24mm with a circular polarizer to help out the blue sky.

Photography is "Problem Solving 101"

The second shot artistically is less interesting but there is more problem solving going on than first meets the eye.

First: I’m on a houseboat. Houseboats float and move with the waves. Which means I need to keep a fairly high shutter speed. Not too much of a problem since the scene if already very bright.

Second: I’m trying to shoot a “deck” which in reality is a “dock”. It’s floating too and much less stable than the house. See above.

Third: The contrast, or dynamic range, between the shadow area and the full sun area is too large for my camera to capture in one exposure.

Solutions

There are several ways this could be approached.

1) Use several images with different exposures and blend them together in Photoshop later. That would work fine but takes too long for this particular job. The movement of the dock and boats between frames might make this a bit tricky.

2) Use several images with different exposures and blend them automatically using an HDR or Enfusion program. That would normally be a good option, but again the potential movement of dock and boats would cause ghosting or copies of elements. Shutter speeds could increase too much trying to get a proper exposure for the shadow are and motion blur could occur.

3) Use a graduated neutral density filter and place it over the full-sun portion of the frame to bring the exposure for the two areas closer together. This works best when the shadow line is nice and straight and the shadow line in this picture isn’t straight. Also I don’t have a graduated ND filter in my kit right now.

4) Wait. I actually did wait to get the shot, but I couldn’t wait as long as I needed. Waiting is a good option and would have produced a nice result when the sun was setting or behind the nearby hill, but no time for that.

5) Use fill-flash. Since I bring my hot-shoe flashes to real estate shoots I had them available. For this sunny day it took two flashes on full power to bring the shadow area up to a relatively decent level so it still looks like shadow, but doesn’t look like a large black area.

Manage the light

Most photography is about managing the differences between the shadow and highlight areas of a scene to bring them closer together so the camera can capture the scene as our eyes see it. While there are a multitude of ways to accomplish that, it always comes down to what works best for the given situation and the effect you are trying to produce.

Digital Photography, Recent Work, Residential Real Estate bridge, fill flash, houseboat, reflection, troubleshooting

I was a substitute at a BNI meeting the other day. One of the members, Tony Meier, was going on vacation and asked if I could represent him at the meeting. I was looking forward to the meeting since I had been a member of the group for two years and had not been able to attend for quite a while.

I got to the meeting early and saw quite a few familiar faces. It was fun catching up with the members who were in the group when I left. I also met some of the new members.

The commercials

As part of the meeting each attendee stands up and gives a 30 second commercial about their business. I was prepared to give a commercial for Tony and one for myself. I had done it many times before during the two years I was an active member.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how nervous I became as my turn got closer. The butterflies in the stomach started churning and I could feel my pulse in my stomach.

Butterflies are a bad thing

After this relatively short period of absence from the group my comfort level had changed dramatically. Standing up and speaking in front of a crowd has never been my strong point. When I first joined the group and had to stand up and do my commercial I was very nervous. Those nerves lasted a while until I got to know the group and had some practice with my commercial. By the time I left the group I was much more comfortable giving my commercial even to groups I was attending for the first time.

I’ve continued attending other networking functions since leaving the group, but few of them require giving a commercial of any length. When I returned to the BNI group I didn’t think I would be so nervous during the commercials.

Keep up on it

In reality most things require regular practice to not lose a comfort level or “edge” whether it’s a sport, cooking, photography, or public speaking. The more you do something, the easier it becomes. You learn to work through the issues and the tough challenges and they become part of your experience. Stop doing something for a while and those experiences fade and you have to relearn them. They may not take as long to learn the second time around, but you are bound to make a few of the same mistakes along the way.

While I still feel comfortable at the other networking events I attend, I obviously need to get out a little more and exercise the public speaking role. It’s not the funnest thing I can think of, but becoming more comfortable speaking to people can have big benefits when trying to run a small business.

Miscellaneous bni, commercial, speaking, speech

And it only takes a few steps to actually get there. That’s right, all those other architectural photographers in Seattle wish they had organic Google rankings like I have. Here’s how to actually see it.

1. Go to the Google Home Page.
2. Type this in the search field exactly “seattle architectural photographers“. Yes it needs the “s” on the end of photographer.
3. Click the “Google Search” button. As of the writing of this article I’m the 4th listing after local businesses.
4. Now click the “Show options…” link in the upper left, just above the business listings.
5. Then click on the “Images from the page” link that shows up on the left.

Whew. That wasn’t too hard. Here’s what I see when I do those steps. I took the liberty of removing all the distracting elements from the page, which really were not important.

If you change your search term to “seattle architectural photographer” I come in second.

Now to get all my competitions clients to drop them and hire me because I rank so well on Google. I should probably also try to figure out WHY I’m getting such good rankings. I used to be way down in the list even without doing the extra things.

Thanks to my pal Will Austin for pointing this out.

Miscellaneous, News google, rank, search