Yellow Wall

I had one wall of my living room painted a particular shade of yellow. I took this for the painter's website. Processed in Lightroom(!).

I cannot say enough about the NEC MultiSync PA272W. It allows me to switch from self-calibrated (print prep) to sRGB (web, which I work in all day) with the press of a button. My GX8 and X-T1 files processed in ACR to the calibrated colorspace are just lovely. Sometimes I stay up too late at night correcting pix just to look at them.

Mike

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Comments

[Stanleyk]

How do you keep your house that clean with Butters? I have two dogs Ruby and Hugo (I found them dumped on a State Park) and my entire life consists of running the vacuum, delivering dog treats, and mopping up mud. They also like to roll on anything dead or poop.............

[V.I. Voltz]

Don't try an Eizo Color Edge in store. You'll never look at your NEC the same again.

Voltz

[Bob Johnston]

Nice living room and nice picture Mike. Don't give up that monitor for some kind of Apple Retina, you will definitely regret it if you do.

[c.d.embrey]

Is Butters clipping? Or is that just a web artifact.

[Helcio J. Tagliolatto]

Darkroom Yellow.

[Daniel Jansenson]

The small framed pictures on the wall–located just EXACTLY right. Excellent.

[Stephen Scharf]

Isn't great to have a proper monitor that displays colors accurately? ;-)

I know the Eizo's are great but NECs are an excellent value for money.

BTW, you did a good job with photographing your room with new yellow wall.

I'm in the process of starting a real estate photography business (there are a lot of homes for sale in the hot SF Bay Area market), and, of late, I've been very deep in training: learning how to photograph houses, in particular, learning how photograph & light rooms appropriately as there is a very specific "look" that real estate agents want to see. I've shadowing a very good pro who has been mentoring me, and that has been great. He's a very nice guy and excellent real estate photographer.

I've been learning techniques like "flambient" (a mix of flash and ambient lighting that is composited in PS), using "light on a stick", fixing converging verticals, incl. what situations require tilt/shift lenses, being able to see the view outside the windows from inside a room (known as a "window pull") & lighting adjacent rooms so everything looks evenly lit internally.

For example, this shot of the kitchen in the custom home I recently shot in for my Real Estate Photography Workshop is comprised of an ambient light exposure layer, an overall fill flash layer, a second flash layer using a shoot-through umbrella to light up the upper left corner of the room, and a third flash exposure/layer for a speedlite that was sitting on the kitchen counter in the butler's panty at camera right, to light up the butler's pantry, and show the nice steel-framed windows at top right. I was pretty happy with this shot because it looks like natural light, rather than three flash exposures & an ambient layer, all composited and masked in PS.

I've been learning a lot about layer masks and blending modes, and most recently, luminosity masking, which looks to be incredibly powerful.

Regarding your Butters in the room photo, you've got a mix of a various types and amounts of light in the room, as well as the adjacent room, and everything looks pretty well-balanced for what I presume is a single ambient light shot.

Good job!

–Stephen

[Thank you Stephen! I seem to have a certain feel for interiors--I did my own RE photography when I sold my last house (through a broker) and enjoyed doing it. --Mike]

[subroto mukerji]

You've done a very good job photographing your living room in its new yellow livery. Everything properly aligned and well balanced lighting. I'd have erred towards more saturation; you've avoided that pitfall nicely. Butters looks handsome, as always...
Would have loved some EXIF!

[Rob Campbell]

I shot my own place too, for an estate agency, and what a pain that work turned out to be. The problem is that I don't like to smother walls in too much stuff, and pale yellow (marfil arenal) walls without 3D objects just look so flat and featurless, which, of course, is exactly what they are.

I'd hate doing this for a living. Other agencies sent along their own snappers, and they seem to do it all in twenty minutes, available light with flash-on-camera and the results are no better and no worse than my own, using bounced flash as well as flash-on-camera and, of course, daylight.

All of them use tiny cameras and spindly tripods.

I don't think the snaps matter a damn: they give an impression which is mostly a fib: the use of very wide angles make a coffin look huge. I think the psychology is that viewers tune into the price range and then do the circuit. As most seem to be tyre-kickers, having people in becomes a chore and an imposition you just have to accept with whatever grace you can muster.

How I wish this phase would pass successfully.

Unfortunately, as the market is very much dependent on Brits coming to buy in Spain, this Brexit period of massive uncertainty has put a panic into any sensible buyer, with only the super-rich coming to buy million-pounds plus houses as hedges against holding too much capital in pounds sterling. Sadly, my own place isn't anywhere near that price bracket.

Bah! Politicians on the make!

[Louis McCullagh]

Is the NEC much better than IMAC display for colour profiling for prints. Thanks.
I so miss my old sony tube display.

[Paul Richardson]

Very nice shot.

[Greg Wostrel]

Great shot, Mike. The room looks lovely.
That NEC sounds wonderful but, yikes, its pricey! Any idea how it compares to the NEC EA275UHD-BK, which has similar specs, but at half the cost. I sorely need a new monitor.

[Hi Greg, sorry, but I'm not an expert on monitors. I did my research when I bought mine, and I remember it being involved and troublesome—there are too many options, too many factors to consider—but I don't recall the particulars now. --Mike]