Hey Joe,
I like your kitchen photos very much. Whenever I do this sort of thing, the outside is blown out when exposing for the interior lighting.
Your images have a very natural non-HDR look. May I ask how you achieved this?
Thanks
Thanks for the compliment. To achieve the results I do, I really try not to rely on HDR processing, or be too heavy handed with it, and light all of my interiors. I do layer in faster captures to pull back some of the highlights, but I limit it to a 2, or maybe 3, stop bracket if I can. I find that HDRing brackets further apart then 2 or 3 stops creates that fake HDR look.
Also, interior lighting tends to be very dead and flat by design, which is a good thing for living and worker under. However, for photography, it is pretty bad. So lighting helps to break up the space and create depth, along with filling in the shadows.
So, to start, I come up with an idea of what I want the space to look like and try to figure out how much ambient light I need in the photo to get me there. I find the exposure that will work for the effect I need, which could be long enough to let ambient do most of the work or short enough where ambient only burns in the lightbulbs or windows, and then start adding in lights. I use many different types of light modifiers, all for different effects and light & shadows.
I also will gel all of my lights to get the color as consistent as I can, to reduce work in post, which can have the effect of making the image look fake. I also will gel windows, especially if there is blooming, which I have found is impossible to correct in post.
Insofar as what I use and when and how, that all comes down to experience, looking over the times I have been successful and the many many times I failed with flying colors. So, I can not really explain how I know what to do, other then saying I do what makes sense.
I have a few blog posts on my site where I explain my lighting on specific images more in depth and show how I "built" the image with my test shots. For a couple, I took the time to draw the lighting diagrams showing where each light was and with what modifier. You can read more on what I do there.
By far, HDR photography is the easier process to learn; mastering lighting takes years (and I do not consider myself a master.) However, lighting, if done right, produces superior results, and allows you to create images most others can not.