Scott Hargis Interview

[peterst6906]

Just over half and hour until the start of the interview.

To watch the interview, just keep this thread open and then refresh your browser regularly.

Scott and I will go through a set of about two dozen questions and then we'll invite questions from the members.

We hope you enjoy this and also pick up some very useful information for your own photography.

Regards,

Peter

[peterst6906]

30 minutes to go.

Regards,

Peter

[peterst6906]

Welcome everyone to this first live, online interview on the Photocamel and it is a pleasure that for this first interview we have the opportunity to interview Scott Hargis (New Work from Scott Hargis Photography), well known interior photographer. If you haven’t seen much of his photography and you want some inspiration, check out his site and his Flickr stream (Flickr: Photos from Scott Hargis).

We hope you enjoy this discussion and look forward to some ongoing discussion in the Architecture forum, including some posts of your own interior photography.

Finally before we start, welcome to the new members who have signed up at the site as a result of this interview. All the moderators hope you check it out and find it a nice friendly place to spend some time.

[peterst6906]

Scott, firstly welcome to the Photocamel and thanks for agreeing to this interview. As you know, when this concept was initially planned, you were the first person I thought of in relation to architecture photography and I am grateful that you agreed to be involved in this.

[Scott Hargis]

Thanks, Peter, I'm glad to be here!

Hello, everyone!

[peterst6906]

Ok, so to ease into it, how long have you been shooting and what started you in photography?

[Scott Hargis]

I started shooting professionally 3 years ago, almost to the day, in fact. Previously I was a very low-end amateur photographer, doing nature shots, flower close-ups, bad landscapes, etc. I had never owned a digital camera.

I had been working in a corporate job for the same company for almost 15 years, and was slowly losing my soul (not to mention my mind). I started seeing a career counselor, and at the bottom of all those standardized tests the same thing kept coming up: Photography.

I became obsessed with the idea, and a few weeks later I wrote a letter of resignation and took the plunge. No clients, no experience, no equipment, no capital, nothing. It was a pretty dumb thing to do, really. It worked out, and I can’t adequately express how much I love what I do every day, but I went through some lean times there for a while. Life is much better when you have clients.

[peterst6906]

Wow. I'll bet life is much better once you establish yourself and I admire your decision to change careers mid-stream.

That's the type of decision that a lot of us would like to take but it's rare that someone actually does it.

I take it then that you are self-taught, or when you changed career, did you also study as part of that?

[Scott Hargis]

I’m self-taught. I read technical photography books pretty voraciously, and I spend hours online, just studying technique and looking at other photographer’s work. It's been a 3-year immersion course, and it's still ongoing......I need a life!
For interiors specifically, I have a great mentor: Thomas Grubba. When I met him I was just starting to try my hand at interiors and was struggling. He had been at it for about 3 years, and had developed a great system for lighting and post-processing.
I’ve taken what he showed me and sort of turned it into my own style, although the foundation is still Thomas’ technique.
He and I still work together and swap ideas and techniques almost every day.

[Scott Hargis]

Thomas Grubba Photography

[peterst6906]

Thanks for the link. I just took a quick look and there are some very nice images there.

Thomas also seems to focus on architecture, and I wonder if that's what you've focussed on since you turned professional, or did you also try some other aspects of the field?

I notice for example that your Flickr stream has some travel shots and lately some Corporate shots.

So what interested you about Architecture and are you still concentrating primarily on that or broadening out into other areas?

[Scott Hargis]

I do other stuff, too. But interiors is the bread and butter.
Corporate headshots, portraits, random commercial assignments. For a while I was a stringer with the San Francisco Chronicle, and also another small local paper. I’ve shot a lot of – what do you call it, “adventure sports” like sailing regattas, windsurfing, climbing, backpacking, stuff like that. I like athletes. You can see some of it on Photoshelter, I think if you search for my name it comes up.
I don’t put any of that stuff up on Flicker because the copyright infringement issue is getting really bad there. But the Strobist forum and the PFRE forum are so useful in helping me build my skills that I can’t quite give those up.

[Scott Hargis]

Actually, I think at the very beginning I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to shoot. And I sort of wanted to shoot anything that would earn a paycheck, so I wasn't very discriminating.

The architecture thing I just basically stumbled on, and somehow it really really works for me, on a personal level. There's something about making images of houses, and rooms, and spaces that scratches some sort of itch. I'm sure my therapist will have plenty to say about that!! (laughing)

But it's true...it wouldn't seem at first to be a very creative genre, but I do find it very satisfying.

[peterst6906]

Yeah, I've seen your work on Strobist before and recently saw the link to the Photography for Real Estate site.

So to move into some technical questions about your images, particularly what I have seen through those links, your style is somewhat unique, although I notice that it shares many similarities with Thomas.

What I mean by that, is that although your main subject is a specific room or interior area, you concentrate heavily on getting all the other spaces well exposed too. Often when I see interior shots, the interior will be well exposed, but the exterior views through windows and doors are sometimes blown out or very dark.

It almost seems, like in this image for example:

Living Room with View (and me) on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

that you first expose for the exterior and then use lighting to bring the interior or your main subject up to the same level. It's almost counter intuitive in that we normally first expose for the subject and try to control the other spaces, but you seem to expose for the other spaces at times and then use lighting to control the main subject.

Is that a good summary of your basic approach?

[Scott Hargis]

Yeah, windows are a big deal. And the shelter magazines right now are all leaning towards blown-out windows. But oftentimes the view out a window is something that’s hugely important to my clients.
So for sure one of the first things I do in evaluating a room is make a decision about the windows: do I want to see everything that’s out there (beautiful green trees, view, sky) or just hint at what’s out there (a view of the house next door?) or not show it at all (the cement factory next door).
So I start out by exposing for what I want in the windows, which could be anything from f/5.6 and 1/20th to “blow it out” up to f/14 and 1/250th to bring in every detail. Above 1/250th I can’t sync with my flashes, so that’s the upper limit.
Once I have that exposure, I start lighting the interior to match the ambient.



So here's a shot with no added light, just whatever tungsten or whatever light fixtures are in the room. Here I just wanted to get the window exposure:





So then the next step is to bring the interior up to match that exposure. One thing that I can do because I'm using remotely triggered lights, is get the adjoining rooms lit as well. Check out the room at the bottom of the staircase:





Little details like that can really make the shot.

[Scott Hargis]

This is another good example, although I don't have the ambient-only exposure handy. The interesting thing about this one is that to avoid some reflections I just opened the sliding glass doors. I still had some reflections from my lights in the sides, and I cloned them out more or less.

[peterst6906]

That's a perfect example of what I was asking and it's one of the aspects that takes your images to a totally different level.

So do you use speedlights in basically all of your shots, or do you concentrate on having good ambient interiors as the higher priority?

[Scott Hargis]

Thanks.
I start by evaluating ambient, and then add strobes to even out the illumination. If you have good ambient, go with it! It sure is easier. But my clientele wants to be able to see into every corner, and wants to know exactly what shade of paint is on the walls.
The human eye is very very clever about adjusting to different light, on the fly as the eye roves around the room. The camera can’t do that, so my job is to even out everything until the image (if I do a good job) looks like what you would experience if you were there. This is especially challenging when it comes to windows.
It’s important to remember for whom I’m shooting most of these images: Real Estate Agents. The entire point of the shoot is to make people want to come see the house in person. So the idea is to create a bright, crisp, spacious look that shows the main selling points of the house (view, fireplace, hardwood floors, remodeled kitchen, whatever), and gives some idea of the layout.

I pop at least a little flash into almost every shot I make. Partly this is to make color correcting easier. Ambient-only shots tend to go very yellow, and amber, and it can be extremely difficult to get accurate colors. Adding even a little flash, which is blue (about 5500K) seems to go a long way towards evening out the gradations and getting me back to a true color.
Mixing light sources of different colors can get tricky sometimes: here I had an almost completely ambient exposure, and just added a touch of flash from the left, along with some bounced off the palm of my hand to warm it up a little: