Last night, I gave a talk on photography for real estate stagers for the Vancouver City Stagers meetup. Staging and real estate photography of course have a natural affinity: a well-staged interior makes for better photos, and since stagers' work tends to be very temporary--in fact, the better the job they do the shorter their work sticks around, photography is the best (only!) way to promote it. (Oh, and we both have the same goal of showing people what they can do with a space and making it easier for realtors to sell it and buyers to make it their own).

One of the big frustrations in doing interior photography is having to work with mixed light. Since my talk was already getting a wee bit long and a wee bit technical for some, I didn't cover the usual way we pros often end up whacking our light into submission: using gels. Joe McNally refers to this as 'the Valley of the Gels', and since I'm in the throes of recalibrating the gel packs I use with my LED hotlights on location since Capture One renders light colour a lot more accurately (and a lot less forgivingly) than does Lightroom, I got to make a run this afternoon out to CinequipWhite for...more gels. This means more testing tonight, but such is the way of things. There's a standard spiritual, "Down to the River to Pray", and since praying happens often when dealing with mixed light...it's parody time!

Down to the Valley of Gels (to the tune of Down to the River to Pray):