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Northlight

Photography

Photographed at the hour the light is right.

Your photographs are the first thing a guest judges, and usually the only thing.

Rooms with verified professional photos were booked 9% more often in a Carnegie Mellon study (opens in a new tab) of Airbnb listings.

An open sided terrace lounge with timber floors, orange cushions and a garden beyond.
A guest room with a wide bed and floor-to-ceiling windows onto thick green forest.
An infinity pool at a tropical hotel, palms and cabanas reflected in it, the sea beyond.

What the day involves.

Today in Colombo: sunrise 05:57, sunset 17:53. We shoot the hour after one and the hour before the other.

  1. Before the day

    A call to walk through the property with you: which rooms matter, what the guests come for, where the light falls. We write the shot list, and if aerials are wanted we check the site is one we are allowed to fly over.

  2. The hour after sunrise

    The first light window. Exteriors with long, soft light, the garden and the water before anyone is up, and the aerial approach while the air is still.

  3. The middle of the day

    Interiors, when the light through the windows is even: the rooms, the bathrooms, the details a guest asks about. Never the outside, which is the worst light of the day.

  4. The hour before sunset

    The second window, on a Villa Day. The terrace, the pool with its lights on, the view the guest is booking for, and the dusk frame that usually becomes the first photograph on the site.

  5. After the day

    Every frame edited by hand, then delivered at full size and at web sizes, in your name. The ones that go on the site were composed for its layout before we arrived.

A Half Day, or the whole of it.

Half Day

One light window and twenty finished photographs.

Light windows
one
Finished photographs
20
Aerial frames
None
Vertical cuts
None

Villa Day

Both light windows in one day: 35 photographs, eight aerial frames and three vertical cuts.

Light windows
two
Finished photographs
35
Aerial frames
8
Vertical cuts
3

Aerials are subject to site permission: some places near airports, military sites and heritage sites cannot be flown over, and we tell you before the day, not on it. Food, staff portraits and a return visit when a new room opens can be added.

See the prices

The travel is ours. So is the weather.

We are in Colombo and we come to you, anywhere on the island, at our cost. If the weather is wrong on the day, we come back, and the second visit is not on your invoice.

Photographs taken at noon on a phone are why most properties look like listings. The hour is the difference, and the hour is what we are paid to wait for.

Wherever the property is, we come to you.

Send a photograph of your property and a line about it. We are in Colombo, we answer the same day, and if we are not the right people for the job we will say so.