Have you ever marveled over stunning real estate photographs and wondered how the photographer pulled off such an image? There are no competing color temperatures, the shadows are neither too strong nor unnaturally flat, and you can even see a crisp view out the windows!
Try as you might with the HDR technique, you may find yourself scratching your head as to how they got these stunning results. It’s probably because the photographer went a step further with the flambient photography method.
To help you take your real estate images to the next level, let’s look at how to use flambient photography in real estate! And if you find this is the missing link to your real estate photography, you can find more detailed information in our Real Estate 201 Course. Now, let's dive in!
What Is Flambient Photography?
Many of you may be raising an eyebrow at this funny word you’ve never seen before. What on earth is “flambient” photography?
Simple. It’s the combination of a flash image and an ambient image. When using the flambient method in real estate, you will be taking multiple images and layering them together, only keeping the best attributes of each.
You may have taken real estate photos using ambient lighting only to be frustrated by an unwanted color cast or other mixed color temperatures between the interior and exterior light sources. Even blending multiple ambient images through HDR can produce a weird result.
Or you may have used a flash to get the same light temperature throughout the image. However, the flash image introduced harsh shadows in weird places that don’t look natural at all.
Wouldn’t it be nice to combine these images to get the best of both worlds? Boom! That’s flambient photography.
Let’s break down how this works and how to wow your real estate clients using the flambient method.
Setting Up Your Equipment
What equipment will you need for the flambient method? Mostly, the same equipment you would generally use for real estate photography, but with the addition of a flash. Aside from your camera and a wide-angle lens you’ll need these other items.
Tripod
Set your camera up on a sturdy tripod. It is highly important for your camera to remain stationary while taking all of these images. Your images must be taken from the exact same spot in order to align them later on in post-processing.
Shutter Release
Then, make sure you have some kind of shutter release. You can get a special cable release, remote trigger, or even download an app for your smartphone that will trigger the camera.
This is important to avoid camera shake when depressing the button. If all else fails, you could always use the 2-second timer on your camera. Not ideal, but works in a pinch.
Flash
For the flash shots, you’ll need some sort of flash or strobe light. You can even use a little speedlight, just make sure you’ve got something powerful enough for the job.
Flash Trigger
For best results, you’ll want to use an off-camera flash. Thus, you’ll need a flash trigger to mount on your camera that will fire your flash remotely without the flash being connected to the camera.
Light Stand and Reflector
This piece of equipment will not always be needed. Most homes have white ceilings that you can bounce the flash off. However, if the home has a dark ceiling, a reflector will save the day.
The Ambient Image
We’ll start by taking the ambient image.
Always shoot real estate photography in RAW to allow for the highest dynamic range. As you know, windows are often much brighter than the darker corners of the room. Balancing the lighting is one of the biggest challenges of real estate photography.
Your first image should be correctly exposed for the space. The windows will be too bright and some shadows in corners may be a little dark, but you should get an overall sense of the room.
You can also combine the HDR and flambient methods in your real estate images. Do this by bracketing three (or more) ambient images at +2, 0, and -2. Later on, you’ll combine the ambient images first and then use the resulting image as the ambient image for your final result.
The Flash Image
Once you’re happy with the ambient image, it’s time to break out the flash. Remember, leave your camera firmly mounted on the tripod and don’t move anything yet.
Generally, you’ll be able to bounce the light off the white ceiling, so you won’t necessarily need any light modifiers. Hand holding your flash, hold it up towards the ceiling and angle it slightly back — preferably about 18 inches to 2 feet away.
If you don’t have a flash trigger, you can leave the flash on the camera and just point it straight up. However, it’s more likely that you’ll get undesirable flash-created shadows in the image. Moving the flash up closer to the ceiling helps avoid this problem.
The exposure will be based on the window. Set your camera to expose for the view and use the flash to brighten the interior to match. You may need to take a couple of test shots to figure out the right flash power.
Also, be aware of reflections. If you’re getting too many reflections, try changing the angle of the flash.
Using the flash will allow you to avoid color casts on the walls and will bring balance to all the varying light temperatures in the scene.
The Windows Image
The window image isn’t always strictly necessary. But if you want to showcase a property’s view, or if a crystal clear window is simply what you like to see, this image is critical.
Expose for the windows so you can see the view outside. Then point your flash at the windows to light them up.
As you can imagine, pointing your flash directly at the windows may cause major reflection issues! Experiment by placing your flash at different angles (another benefit of off-camera flash) to avoid reflections as much as possible. To eliminate reflections completely, take an additional shot using the exact same exposure settings, but WITHOUT firing the flash. This “safety” shot will look like a silhouette with little to no detail in the room itself, but will have perfectly clear windows. You can use this image later in post to brush away any reflections or flaws if necessary.
Have you ever noticed that hazy effect around the windows when you’ve tried combining images in the past? Most of the image turns out great, but there’s always that halo around the window that you can’t get quite right. That’s what this image is for.
Post-Processing
As you can see, you end up with quite a few images to create your final result. Even a basic shot may entail 3 or 4 images… 1 flash, 1 ambient, and a window layer or 2. Additionally, when it comes to larger rooms or spaces with a higher level of complexity, you might decide to get creative. For example, you may choose to do an exposure bracket (HDR) for your ambient image, or multiple flash layers to blend together to truly customize the look and feel of that finished product.
What do you do with all these images at the end?
Well, you have to blend them together. This can be done quickly and easily using Lightroom and Photoshop. Follow along to see the process in action.
Step 1
Modify your raw files as you prefer in Lightroom. This can include color-correcting your flash image, applying any profiles or presets that you like to your images to make them look the way you like them to look. REMEMBER, the white balance of your ambient image DOES NOT MATTER! We won’t be retaining that information in the end so don't worry about color correcting the ambient layer if you don't want to. You may choose to straighten and crop your image here as well.
Step 2
Once you’ve made all the adjustments to the raw files, it’s time to export them as layers into Photoshop. Select all the raw files in Lightroom that you want to export, right-click them, and scroll up to “Edit In” and choose “Open As Layers In Photoshop.” This will automatically export your raw files into Photoshop, stacking them up as layers all ready for you to blend.
Step 3
Arrange your Photoshop layers in the following order: Flash on the bottom, Ambient in the middle, and Windows on top. Next, select the Ambient layer and change the blending mode to “Luminosity.”
This will tell Photoshop to apply the lighting information from the ambient layer to the flash image underneath, but NOT the color. Try reducing the opacity of the ambient layer here to 50% as a starting point. You can adjust this later to your liking.
Step 4
Lastly, select the window layer on top. In our example here, the flash was fired directly at the window, illuminating everything around the glass itself, but with no reflections disturbing the view. You’ll notice in step 5 how everything around the windows looks blown out except the view itself. This is the goal! Now we can change the blending mode on the window layer to “Darken.” This will tell Photoshop to discard everything that is brighter than the layers beneath, and keep only the portions that are darker (which is the view.) You may want to apply a layer mask to the window layer and brush in only the window itself rather than keeping the entire window layer visible.
STEP 5
Once all the blending is complete in Photoshop, we can merge all the layers into one finished image. At this point, you can do any final retouches that may be necessary, including any dodging and burning that might improve the overall appearance of the image. If you didn’t straighten your image in step 1, you will want to do that now!
And just like that, our work is done!
Is Flambient More Work Than Standard Photography?
Using the flambient method in real estate may appear to take considerably longer than using the HDR technique, but in reality, it doesn’t. You will typically set your camera up to shoot 3 or more bracketed images one after the other, and you will still take time choosing your angle and setting up your tripod for each shot which already takes a bunch of time.
With flambient photography, you’re only adding one or two more images to your shot list. This may add a few minutes to shoot a property but will not add a significant amount of time to shoot with the flambient method.
Post-processing is also fairly straightforward. With Lightroom and Photoshop as robust as they are now, the flambient method is not significantly longer than a standard real estate workflow.
Once you develop a system, you’ll speed things up considerably.
Because of the minimal additional time and significant improvement of final product, flambient photography works well for standard real estate photography and for high-end, luxury properties as well. Furthermore, flambient photography is excellent for showcasing a gorgeous view through the windows — a sometimes frustrating undertaking with HDR photography alone.
Honing Your Skills Using Flambient Photography
Are you considering getting into real estate photography using the flambient method? The quality of images you can produce is well worth the time and effort spent learning the technique. You can learn more about this photography technique in our course Real Estate Photography 201.
A portfolio of images taken with the flambient method will go a long way toward landing big spenders in the real estate realm. And when you can earn a living doing something you love, you’ve figured out the secret to life!
