Good commercial property photography and video production always needs to consider the aims of the material and how much footfall should be shown.
I have shot many, many commercial properties open to the public over the years. These include:
- shops, supermarkets and department stores
- shopping centres and retail parks
- restaurants, cafes and pubs
- gyms, soft play areas, trampoline parks
- casinos and betting shops
- medical centres, GP surgeries and veterinary clinics
- care homes
- hardressers and nail salons
- hotels
- petrol stations and multi-storey car parks
- schools, universities, colleges, libraries and community centres
In all of these jobs (and indeed any that involve shooting out of doors on busy streets), dealing with the public and understanding how to make the frame look either as busy as possible, or as empty as possible, are as important as understanding the technical aspects of photography.
There is an art to positioning the camera in places that you know will produce the busiest loking shots.
Shooting scenes to produce busy looking images requires patience and timing. It is also crucial to take care to ensure that the people in the photograph frame the shot and lead the eye to the property, rather than crowd the centre of the frame and obscure the property behind.
One effective technique with external shots is to wait for a group of people to approach from each direction and pass each other in front of the property. The motion from the two groups creates an energy that gives a busy feel to the picture. It can also be more dynamic to have people at different distances from the camera, helping to fill the space and make the scene feel busier. Again though, there is a pitfall that is crucial to avoid – if someone is too close to the camera then they fill too much of the screen and instead of framing the property, they block too much of the image and make it feel unbalanced. The negative space created by a large object blocking a portion of the image can be useful in art prints and creating eye-catching compositions but it can only be used as a deliberate compositional tool. Generally in property photography it will feel like a mistake and frustrate the viewer.
The last thing to consider is whether you actually want to obscure anything within the frame. Sometimes a neighbouring unit might be vacant or in poor condition and it can be beneficial to use people or objects in the foreground to hide it from view. Using people walking past can feel more natural and also emphasise the positives of a busy location, while eliminating from view the negative aspects of the area.
The correct camera settings can make pictures feel busier.
The choice of shutter speed is also crucial. The slower the shutter speed, the more that elements which move in the shot will become blurred. When people are walking across a property, this means that they each take up more space and make the scene feel busier. When the street actually is really busy then the movement creates a different feel, like a beehive with movement everywhere. It is of course crucial to use a sturdy tripod in these shots to ensure that the property and other stationary objects remain clear and sharp. If you use too slow a shutter however, then the people will lose all definition and instead there is only a smear of colour across the image.
Camera positioning can also greatly impact how busy a scene appears. When you look up a street towards a property, rather than across a road, you will benefit from people at different distances from the camera all adding to the feeling of people moving around and filling up the pavement in the photograph. Low angle shots can be very effective in highlighting the depth of a shot and getting layers of people at different distances.
Choosing the correct time of day to shoot internal shots is crucial.
It would be easy to make the mistake of assuming that since you don’t need to worry as much about the weather or available light for internal shots that the timing of these shots is less important than external shots. Choosing the correct time of day, however, is crucial to ensuring high quality internal shots. This is partly because the quality and colour of the light visible through windows will change throughout the day. Changes in weather can also have a big impact on footfall inside shops. More importantly though, the time of day will hugely affect the number of customers in shops and even how many staff are present in offices or other commercial businesses.
There are some other things to keep in mind to ensure you capture the busiest possible shots. Areas around checkouts will always attract the most people and are obviously where queues will form so getting lots of shots around such areas or with these people in the background can help a lot. Similarly, doorways will attract a lot of foot traffic and you can predict that this is where people will pass the camera. It is easy to set up near an entrance for example and set the shutter speed to allow for a little motion blur as people walk past. Waiting for a group to enter while there are also other people in the background of the frame will make the shop feel as though it is full.
Often staff will be reluctant to allow customers to be photographed, and in offices they frequently don’t want any employees in the pictures. Maintaining a good relationship with staff and gaining their co-operation is so important in all shoots. Putting people at ease about what I am capturing, how faces can be blurred in images or simply working around their schedule to shoot areas while they are empty will ensure that I don’t miss out on photographs of important areas and that I can shoot people in spaces which should look busy in the images.
