I run a small nursery on the western edge of the valley and I spend half my summer photographing propagation benches, which are the glossiest, most light-trapping surfaces a grower has to deal with. So when a neighbor asked me to photograph the new floor in his garage, I thought it would be easy. It was ninety-eight degrees outside and about a hundred and twenty inside, and the epoxy coating he had just paid for reflected the entire ceiling like a dark pond. Every frame I shot showed more of the roof structure than of the floor. What I know about shooting a coated slab comes from that afternoon, and from a lot of reflective benches before it.
Why a coated floor fights the camera
A garage coating is designed to be clean, seamless and slightly glossy, and every one of those qualities works against a photograph. The gloss turns the surface into a mirror, so the camera records the ceiling lights, the door opener, the water heater and even the person holding the camera instead of the finish. The seamlessness removes the landmarks — no boards, no joints, no grain — that would otherwise give the eye a scale and a direction. And the reflection is usually brighter than the floor itself, so the meter is pulled toward the highlights and the actual color of the coating goes dark and muddy. The problem is not the floor. The problem is light bouncing where you do not want it.
Cutting flare at the source
You fix reflections before you touch the camera. Turn off the overhead lights and work with daylight through the open garage door, so the only bright thing in the room is the doorway and not a row of tubes in the reflection. If the sun is coming in hard, stand a black foam board or a dark jacket where the worst reflection lands — a simple flag that the floor can mirror instead of the sky. A polarizer helps a great deal on a coated surface, and unlike a damp concrete driveway it usually helps at almost any angle, so fit one and rotate it until the sheen drops. Get low and shoot at a shallow angle to the floor rather than straight down, and check the highlight warning on the back of the camera; if the reflection is clipping, move the flag rather than underexposing the whole frame.
Working the desert clock
In Las Vegas the schedule is everything. Shoot in the first two hours after sunrise, when the light through the garage door is soft and the slab is still cool, or in the last hour before sunset. By eleven the concrete has soaked up heat, the air above it starts to shimmer, and a long lens will show the wobble as a soft, dishonest blur. The desert also throws a hard, blue-white light that will push the white balance around, so shoot raw, set the balance to daylight, and put a gray card in the first frame — you will want it later if the owner wants a file that matches the paint they chose. If the garage faces west, the evening light comes in low and long and turns the floor into a sheet of glare, so watch the clock and shoot the framing frames first while the surface is still even.
Framing a floor so it reads as a floor
Camera height does most of the work. Drop to about a foot off the ground and let the floor fill the bottom two thirds of the frame, with a wall base, a cabinet leg, or the edge of a tire to anchor the perspective and give the coating a scale. Include the garage door threshold and a little of the apron outside, because the transition is what tells a viewer where the floor begins. Keep the verticals straight so the room does not lean, and take one wide frame of the whole bay plus two or three tight frames of the finish itself. When the coating is done and cured, the same set works as a record for the owner and as a reference for the epoxy crew if a patch, a spill, or a re-coat ever has to match up — a dated, evenly lit pair of frames answers that question far faster than a memory does. I keep the gray-card frame with the set for exactly that reason.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my garage floor look like a mirror in photos? The coating is glossy and reflects the ceiling. Turn off overhead lights, add a dark flag, and use a polarizer.
What is the best time to photograph a coated floor? Early morning or the last hour before sunset, before the slab heats and the air starts to shimmer.
Should I shoot straight down at the floor? No. Get low and shoot at a shallow angle so the surface shows depth, and keep a wall or a tire in the frame for scale.