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Andy
Here’s a stunning oceanfront estate I had the privilege of photographing recently for Doc & Donavon Ellingson of Sotheby’s International Realty. 12,000 sq ft, 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, a wine tasting room, and several pretty nice cars… A real bargain at just under $6,000,000.
We had to break out all the stops for such a magnificent place. I don’t mind sayin’ that it gets a little scary 30 feet up during 25 mph winds in this contraption.
But the result was clearly worth it.
Every 60 days or so I like to update my ‘Recent Work’ gallery on my website. My goal has always been to feature particularly spectacular projects on the blog as soon as we’ve completed them. But I’m so busy recently that just ain’t been happening. Not complaining, mind you. Busy is a wonderful thing when you’re a self-employed freelancer. But there’s only so much time in the day and between shooting, editing, scheduling, and every other thing that’s going on in my day-to-day life, you just have to prioritize your time. Unfortunately, regular blogging seems to consistently find it’s way to the bottom of the list. Maybe for the New Year I can try to step it up a bit and make more of an effort to provide some reasonably interesting content on a regular basis. We’ll see…. (both about the regularity and ‘interesting’ bit…..)
In the meantime, I’m going to cover the last 60 days or so in one post. You can see the whole gallery here. But for if you’re in a hurry, below are some highlights. No question many of these images will get promoted to the ‘regular’ portfolio when the NEXT ‘Recent Work’ gallery goes up in a couple months.
Feel free to let me know your thoughts or ask any questions in the comment section. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Enjoy!
AF
Thanks to my friends at Sotheby’s International Realty and The Corcoran Group for giving me such great subject matter to photograph.
Real Estate Photographers of America & International (REPAI) is a trade association that represents real estate photographers from all over the world. Many of the world’s best RE photogs are members of the organization and it is a great resource for both photographers and those who have need for high-level real estate photos.
Anyway…I got a note from Alan Blakely, founder and director of both REPAI and it’s parent organization The Association of Independent Architectural Photographers (of which I’m also a member). He had seen an image from one of my recent jobs and liked it well enough to ask if he could use it on front page of REPAI.
Me: “Um… Let me think….. ”
A couple emails back and forth and bada-bing….there ya go….my picture on the homepage, in all it’s glory:
It’s really a quite an honor to have an image that has been deemed worthy enough to represent the entire membership of REPAI, worldwide. (I’ll take that as a compliment….)
Thanks, Alan!
Anyway… here’s some other images from that same job. Enjoy….
Architects are an interesting bunch. There are very few professions, or hobbies for that matter, where one has to have incredible, free-flowing creative talent and vision combined with a vast knowledge of, and ability to work with, intense and often complex technical and scientific calculations. People who primarily are creative in their endeavors, like a musician or a photographer, typically aren’t required to have make engineering calculations to ensure a building doesn’t decide to collapse. Guitar players aren’t solving life and death engineering equations while layin’ down a screaming solo. But architects are required to employ the ‘nerdy’ scientific principles and calculations while at the same time creating a one-of-a-kind work of art. Their creations must flow, be unique, and even have a soul – AND not kill anybody.
Probably not the easiest thing in the world to do.
So when I shot the personal, self-designed residence of a renowned local architect, I knew the stakes would be high. Clearly, he would have an extra-personal attachment to his creation and I would have to be on my ‘A’ game. As expected he was very hands-on as we photographed his home – offering suggestions, approving angles, and agreeing (or occasionally disagreeing) with my ideas. He had a specific vision when he designed it, and it was my responsibility to ensure his vision was fulfilled in my pictures.
As it turns out, our visions were similar and thankfully he was pleased with my results.
One note as I reflect on the first shot below. I love photographing a building at twilight when it’s facing west. The setting sun illuminates the western sky which throws light on the west-facing elevation just a little longer, while the opposite eastern sky fades into blue as the night descends. Makes for a great lighting combination and a great photograph.
This property is 6700 sq ft with 4 bedrooms and 4 1/2 baths and is offered by Laura Rodriguez of The Corcoran Group for $1,595,000.
Anytime I get to photograph a 30 million dollar, 22,000 square foot oceanfront estate, a couple things come immediately to mind:
1. There’s going to be some great fodder for my portfolio.
2. It’s probably going to be a little more difficult to shoot than say, an 800 sq ft 2 bedroom apartment.
3. The quality expected by my client is going to be extraordinarily high.
4. I sure as hell hope I don’t break anything.
I mean, that weird-looking statue type thing in the corner could be worth 1500 bucks. Or… it could be a one-of-a-kind masterpiece on loan from the Lourve from some sculptor I’ve never heard of that’s worth 2.75 million dollars. There’s really just no way to know for sure…
In either case, I don’t really have the money to replace it. So I’ll happily take a couple extra minutes to make sure my light stand doesn’t fall over on the thing.
Anyway… as I predicted, thoughts #1-3 proved to be quite true and fortunately, #4 worked out perfectly as well.
This place is a MONSTER. A breath-taking monster… but a monster nonetheless. Mostly because just about every room I photographed was completely NON-conducive to simple photography. Dark wooden walls, dark murals or hand-finished copper on the ceiling, and bright, must-see views out the windows all added up to me having to pull out every trick I know.
The most difficult shot I faced all day is the one of the library. I experimented with a few different lighting techniques and placements. But in reality, the room is so dark, the window is so bright, and nowhere to really hide lights with the composition we needed, I had no choice but to resort to photoshop alchemy. The final image you see here is really a composite of three separate frames. The first frame has two strobes over each of my shoulders firing through white satin umbrellas. The next frame has the light, stand, umbrella, and orange extension cords on the right side of the room about half way down in crystal-clear full view of the camera… It’s job is to light the back-left side of the room. The third frame is a mirror of the second one so the back-right side of the room gets lit. The three frames were masked and blended in photoshop to get rid of the perfectly obvious light stands and the result is what you see below in the first image.
Great fodder for my portfolio? You better believe it…
Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts and questions. I’d love to hear what’s on your mind.
This 22,000 sq ft, 9 bedroom, 12 1/2 bath beauty is offered by Heidi Wicky of Linda A. Gary Real Estate for $22,900,000.
