Hi, I'm David Lasker!

Remember lighting? Like, you know, strobes, soft boxes and light stands? We have lots of lighting equipment and we know how to use it. Many self-styled architectural photographers don’t bother to light their shots and rely instead on available light—a recipe for failure when shooting interiors. One telltale sign is incongruous foreground shadows with loss of detail and sparkle in large areas of the picture that no amount of “brushing up” in Lightroom or Photoshop can compensate for when information is missing because the camera sensor never recorded it in the first place. Such images have a synthetic, fake, over-processed look evoking renderings. Another trait of interiors shot only with available light is images with too much contrast (more dynamic range than the sensor can handle), resulting in whited-out views out the windows and, depending on the time of day, random jets of glaring sunlight (with blown-out highlights) streaming through the windows that overpower everything else in the room. The eye always goes to the brightest part of a photograph, so anyone viewing the photo gets confused and isn’t sure where to look. How does such a distracting photo serve the designer's intentions? All that said, we add light only to the extent necessary to provide needed "fill," much as a conscientious event photographer shoots with a strobe and reflector not to drown people in light but to avoid afflicting their faces with "racoon eyes" (shadowy patches around the eyes). This restraint ensures that our images convey the designer's intentions for lighting in the room.