The above photo is the final product I delivered to the client.

This is an available light photo of what it looks like without editing.

This is another shot from the shoot. I am mixing flash with ambient light. Many call this Flambient Lighting technique. Take a look at this before the ambient light shot below.

Take a look at the colors in the carpet and furniture. The biggest gain in using flash is getting more accurate colors. When you are shooting these photos for a designer, they want accurate colors. You can be in the ballpark for most residential real estate projects, but it has to be accurate for commercial.

I am working hard to make the photos not look like a flash. You see, putting your flashes in the exact location as all the natural lighting to get similar shadows is impossible.

Many photographers will just shoot all available light and then use multiple exposures and combine those for a HDR photo.

Comparing HDR Ambient vs Flambient

Here is a 5 – Stop HDR photo of the location using just ambient.

This is the Flambient version. I think the colors pop and are more accurate. Also, the lightning on the cabinets in the back is better than the available light.

It takes about 10 – 20 minutes to shoot each photo and about the same amount of time to edit each image. This is one of the reasons why commercial real estate photography costs more. The other reason for the increased cost is that it is widely used for marketing and advertising.