Working as an interior photographer, we are often asked what’s involved in the ZAC and ZAC photography service. Well, we thought it was about time we gave an insight into it all – we’ll do our best to keep it short and sweet.
Aaron and I formed ZAC and ZAC, and, to put it simple, we are perfectionists, which has it’s good and bad points but luckily we have each other to stop one another from getting too caught up with plumping cushions. The most important thing to us is making sure we put as much time and care into the space as the interior designer has, hence the amount of time we spend shooting. We work to achieve the true mood, motion and atmosphere each individual designer has created for each unique space. This is a long process as, believe it or not, the camera is not nearly as smart as you think it is so a lot of work needs to go into creating each interior photograph.
The majority of our time is split between working on site and post production, in post production we spend our time bringing to life the emotion and mood first felt in the space. This is done through several aspects; composition, lighting, styling, experience, technique & specialist interior and architectural camera equipment.
One of the biggest surprises to our clients is the amount of camera equipment we use. We can only assume it’s a common misconception that only a professional camera is needed to create stunning images. The real trick comes from our years of experience in manipulating and controlling light, we use our studio lighting sparsely to create the mood of a space and after much practice we found that the term ‘less is more’ applies best (check back for another blog post on this). On a side note, we’ve just finished reading an excellent book by Peter Zumthor called ‘Atmospheres Architectural Environments – Surrounding Objects’ which covers the atmosphere of spaces extensively – definitely worth a read if this aspect of a shoot interests you! Back to it. Our end goal is to create an image that has a natural aesthetic, and done correctly makes no hint of the fact that studio lighting was involved.
Composition lies at the heart of what we do. This is most probably the most time consuming element of a shoot. It’s amazing the amount of work that goes into the moving & positioning of furniture. A photographer once said to us that it was a 95% moving of furniture to 5% photographing game for interior spaces, and we’d say that’s very close to accurate. We work to create an image that is well balanced, draws the eye through the space and emphasis key features / areas of the room.
When it comes down to styling the space we are very hands on, thanks to our design backgrounds we have a natural eye for what looks good and what does not. We also work alongside interior stylists which can speed up the process immensely and is great for bouncing ideas back and forward. Styling is a very important element of high end interior photography, it communicates a story, which aids the mood and atmosphere of an image.
This is just a brief insight into what it takes for us to create a strong interior image, and stands at only half the process – we then have to work on editing and post-production. Keep an eye out for new posts to learn more about further elements of our interior and architectural photography process!