I hate being stuck behind a computer, editing, so my goal when shooting is to get everything as close to perfect IN CAMERA as possible. Here’s the progression of a kitchen edit.
First we start with the SOOC, or straight out of camera, version. Compositionally I love shooting kitchen one points. They’re just so clean and and lend so well to kitchen lines. With this composition I wanted to feature the pantry as well as the flow to the family room in the distance. With a one point it’s imperative to get your lines PERFECT, both verticals AND horizontals. Even one degree off, your image looks sloppy. Many interiors photographers shoot on geared tripod heads to make this easier. I was pretty happy with this composition but the orangey color of the wood combined with the pendant lights gave this kitchen a sickly orange cast so the next step is color editing.
We worked the levels and color and ended up with an image much more balanced and true to life. There’s a bit of a blue cast on the candle but I’m okay with that. There’s a wall of windows, camera right, which is causing that so it’s a natural cast. I leave those alone. I’m pretty happy with this image with one exception. The shelf to the right of the refrigerator had some messy cables that I wasn’t able to do anything about on site. That had to go!
Voila! This is the final image. It took about 10 minutes on site to set up the comp and place the lights and an addition 5 minutes in Photoshop to perfect the image.
What do you think?
