Real Estate shoot at Centre Court Bed & Breakfast

In recent times the company I work for full time sent me and my colleague down to Durban to fix a problem at a client. We were booked into an amazing Tuscan-style guest house called Centre Court Bed & Breakfast. This led us to a situation of being Ready for all occasions.

On this trip we decided to take our cameras with us for our afterhours fun and enjoyment. As well as a general method of expanding our own abilities. On this trip we decided to limit the equipment that we carried with us. This included leaving our tripods at home.

Request

While sitting there on the first night we were playing around with our cameras and one of our hosts Banu noticed it and observed how we were doing things. Banu also asked us a number of questions. The next thing we knew she was requesting us to do a few photos of the rooms for her.

My next internal reaction was to run and duck for cover, wishing we were Ready for all occasions. Wishing we had brought our tripods with us.

Anyway, always being the accommodating type persons, we are. We racked our brains as to how to do this shoot in the most effective way possible with the resources we have at our disposal. Finally, we remembered Banu mentioning her late husband being a photographer and that she still has all his equipment.

I asked her if she still has her husband’s tripod, PROBLEM SOLVED.

Photographing

We then went about in our spare time taking photos of the rooms and using the HDR method. I took five photos per set and using Lightroom to merge the photos into a 32bit format.

This format gives us the quickest cleanest form of high dynamic range which is very suited to architectural photography.

Banu also wanted a photo of the garden court entrance and area. Which was also quick and easy for us to do a lovely night shot on. Here we did a panoramic set of HDR photos which was merged altogether in Lightroom again.

We just love Lightroom for its quick ease of use in respect to getting verticals, horizontals, HDR / Panoramic merges etc. together quickly.

Aside

As an aside to the articles purpose we would love to highlight what a wonderful experience it was for us to stay at this guest house. Both the hosts Peter and Banu were extremely lovely people and went out of their way to make us feel welcome.

The rooms were well presented and clean. The dining area was also well presented and clean.

The garden court area was very pleasant and had a lovely veranda that we sat doing our photographic editing in. Editing took place even while it rained. The food was well presented and tasted excellent.

The honesty bar area was well stocked, pity they had no Flying Fish, but the hosts assured us that they will stock in future.

Be Ready in and out of season. A major lesson learned here by us is what is the bare necessity for trips. Basic camera equipment list must be made up and abided by.