This week’s #5from7photo: Conservatory from the lounge

My wife loves gardening and indoor plants. Not only does the small conservatory has a good selection of plants, the patio doors that lead from the lounge into the conservatory are festooned with plants. I thought they would make a good, if somewhat challenging, photograph.

This is not so easy as it sounds: the main issues being what view to use and coping with the extreme changes in brightness from the relatively dark lounge to the bright conservatory and bright sky outside. First I tackled the view – these are 3 different viewpoints:

First view: Closer to the conservatory with limited view inside the lounge. One mistake is the reading lamp visible on the right.
A more complete view showing all of the end wall and more of the furniture – this is my favourite.
This view shows more of the furniture but doesn’t add anything to the previous view apart from, perhaps, the light and ceiling rose.

The above 3 photos were processed from the ‘raw’ file but the exposure range was to great for the sky to show. As I mostly photograph using the ‘AEB’ setting to take 3 different exposures together, I used HDR software to combine the 3 exposures of the 2nd image above to give this:

HDR version of the second image which now shows detail in the sky – this wasn’t quite right.

So I decided to combine the HDR version with the standard version which gave this:

Colours and contrast, I feel, are better controlled and i have gained the detail in the sky.

I need to do some more experiments but this is a reasonable start.

Author: Paul L.G. Morris

I am an amateur photographer whose photography is mostly of gardens, nature and the rural environment. My specialities are close-ups, panoramic views, or a combination of both that I call 'Nearscapes'. I work mostly for my own interest having closed my business PM Studios Ltd.