Properly Lit Living Room

Strobist Living

It was almost 20 years ago, during the David Hobby Strobist’s popularity that I made this nine-exposure flash-filled photo of a living room.

The intent was to show off the furniture staged in a way that made the pieces attractive to shoppers. Previous advertisements showed the piece of furniture against a stock background. Nothing special but lacking any emotional attachment.

When asked if I could make the photos look better I immediately said yes as I had been doing the Strobist method longer than David Hobby had been teaching it. Almost any news photographer employs the multi-flash technique almost every day.

The technique has a simple explanation. Look at the Strobist website for a complete explanation and tutorials.

This scene used the Strobist technique with remote flashes illuminating each object in the room. The difference was each object - the couch, chairs, table mantlepieces, artwork, and lamps - were individually lit and then composited into a single photo.

This was 20 years ago, long before Photoshop was built into the formidable editing suite of today.

With the camera locked on a tripod, the focus and exposure rings taped into position, and the assistance of a portable light stand (a person) extending a normal light stand to focus the single strobe on each object, photos were made of each piece. The lighting on each photo was checked on a laptop to make sure it was correct in exposure and placement.

After some time making sure there were enough photos to make a clean composite we moved on to lighting the library with a strobe outside shooting through windows to simulate late afternoon light.

That’s another story.

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