At Home Behind the Lens

By Lexi Holian

“I try to make it feel real,” says local photographer Elizabeth Neal. “I don’t know if many people think about houses that way – but when someone sees my photos, I want them to be able to picture themselves inside of it.”

The creative mind behind Milepost Living, Elizabeth has given life to spaces across the Outer Banks with her architectural photography. She’s captured images of everything from grand oceanfront homes to classic Outer Banks beach boxes, and she often works with a diverse clientele that includes realtors, builders and interior designers.

Sitting in Ashley’s Espresso Parlour in Kill Devil Hills, she demonstrates her process by sizing up the room at hand. “I might get down low, and have this plant here,” she says, moving a bit of greenery into her imaginary frame. “Or get really close to a chair so it feels as though you’re sitting here.”

Elizabeth studied graphic design in college, but her photography experience mainly comes from life outside the classroom. She recalls formative moments from her childhood by way of example, such as the time she was captivated by light spilling into a western-facing bathroom at her mother’s house. (A lackluster plastic yellow shower curtain didn’t even deter her from taking a perfect shot of that light.) Years later, when she met her husband Nathan, owner of the Cozy Kitchens Group in Kitty Hawk, he asked her to photograph a kitchen for him. The builder of the home later saw the photos and wanted them, too – which inspired the start of her niche career in architectural photography.

“The perfectionist in me likes details and a certain composition,” she says. “And with houses, I can make things as perfect as I need to.”

Elizabeth’s meticulous approach is almost certainly what makes her photographs stand out. When she shoots the exterior of a house, she makes sure the light is hitting it just right – which often means coming back to it at different periods throughout a day. At other times, the best shots can be had right before sunrise or just after sunset, so she’ll arrive well ahead of schedule to open the blinds and set up the shot.

“That’s when the house is glowing, but there’s still enough ambient light that the exterior background still has some color, too,” she says of her twilight images. These shots are so popular that Elizabeth has been known to show up to bigger houses along the beach road as early as four a.m. to open them up in preparation for that magic light.

“If I’m going to get up early, I might as well get up really early and stand there for 20 minutes to make sure I’ve got the right time,” she explains. “It’s a very small window, and you can literally miss it by minutes.”

When Elizabeth first started shooting houses, she used to go inside and turn all the lights on for interior shots. But her look has changed over time as well. Now she aims to use the least amount of light possible and let her camera do the work.

“You can take a photo in near darkness,” she says, “but if the shutter’s open long enough, it’s going to look bright. And I always want to get it right in camera. I’ll usually still have some editing to do afterwards, but I’d rather shoot it as close to the final result as I can beforehand.”

Sometimes she prefers the perfect symmetry of homes – using a drone to get those precise, vertical lines that come with shooting a three-bedroom house exterior from the right height – but other times it’s better to shoot things slightly askew.

Each project is different depending on the space and the client. A 15-bedroom home can be an all-day event, or longer, if she returns for a twilight shot. If the photos are for an interior designer, she focuses on the aesthetic of the room and highlights smaller details. For a builder, she might show the grain of the wood or the curve of a handrail.

And shooting a house is different than shooting people. Elizabeth knows this well, because in addition to Milepost Living, she has a beach photography business called Milepost Portraits.

“With people, especially beach portraits, you’re trying to capture the emotion,” she says. “It’s kind of fast and loose. But a house can have emotion, too, and it feeds that side of me that wants to go slow and take my time. I like the quiet, and the chance to take a really good look at a scene – because seeing a finished product that you can be proud of is truly the best part.”