“All I need is a shot of my restaurant.” This is a fairly common request from some clients, but of course it’s rarely that simple. Every building exterior has a “best time of day” to be photographed. Ted’s first question to his client or the building owner is “When does the sun hit the front of the building?” Timing is very important and the right sunlight can make or break a great photo. Ted inquires about the best sunlight, researches, and often scouts a location before shooting to insure that he shoots the building with the best available sunlight. Cloudy days and heavy shadows are the nemesis of professional photographers. But in occasional situations where it’s impossible to get direct sunlight on a building or even partial sunlight, Ted employs special exposure techniques to capture the shaded part of the building. Sometimes photo retouching is needed using Photoshop to carefully hand select the shady part of the building, then lighten and balance out the color of the building overall. The before and after results show a dramatically better photograph than could be achieved with the raw camera shot.
Ted’s favorite lighting challenge is to shoot night time exposures. “I love capturing the soft available light of restaurant lamps or dimly lit structures, exterior and interior.” These night photos are the most dramatic in his portfolio and Ted earned 3 photography awards for 3 photographs, and all three were time exposures. The first one was for a client’s tractor trailer on the George Washington Bridge. The second captured an actual lightning strike of the new One World Trade Center in New York City and the third utilized a night time exposure of the New York City skyline shot from a cruise ship with tractor trailer parked on the Hudson River. Whenever you need a photographer with the right sensitivity and advanced skill to handle your challenging lighting situation, look no further than Ted DeCagna Photography.
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