Maybe it had something to do with the 4th of July fireworks last night or being over-served by the bar tender, but some night shots of our latest project, the Davidson Residence, sounded like a good blog post today. We love taking night shots and dusk shots of our projects because the conditions keep changing by the minute – it’s a balancing act between exercising patience and quick maneuvering. We’re also finding some key ingredients that greatly improve the quality of night shots:

1.    Get all the lights on, all of ‘em. An obvious one, but you’d be surprised how often we forget.
2.    Shooting in .RAW format to capture a greater spectrum of light – you can always narrow down the spectrum later, but you can’t create more spectrum once the shot is taken.
3.    There’s a critical window of time when the artificial lights glow and there’s still enough light in the sky to define the clouds – the magic moment.
4.    Adobe Lightroom – this software has been critical to our in house photography lately.
5.    Extraordinary homeowners who allow us to poke around the house for several hours (a huge thanks to Mike and Chelan).

We’re certainly no pros – so if you are, let us know how we’re doing.
Cheers and happy birthday America.