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.

I got the call Halloween morning that I had been waiting on for the last 3 months.  It was the PR director from Derecktor Shipyards telling me that the photoshoot for Cakewalk was on, and to be at the dock at 7:00 pm ready to rock.  Yes, I was going to be photographing Cakewalk, the largest privately owned yacht ever built in the United States…Ever.

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill megayacht (if there is such a thing).  This is creme de la creme of the ultra-luxury, mega-yachting world.  Not only based on sheer size, (281 feet, 2998 tons) but on her unbelievable interior luxury appointments, all of which were designed by Liz Dalton of Dalton Designs.  From the intricate wood design, to the hand-woven carpet, to the state of the art electronics, this is quite possibly single most significant story in American yachting history.

Just to give you an idea of what we’re talking about, Cakewalk is made up of 6 decks. She carries 3 separate (large) ultra luxury, 35′ + tenders in her hull that are lifted out of a giant door in the side by a 40 ton crane.  She has a crew of 24, to take care of just 14 guests.  This boat is so large, that two people could have free reign over the entire place and never see each other.

And speaking of crew… These folks are hand-picked and happen to be some of the nicest, kindest, most genuine folks I have ever met.  We worked two nights in a row, all night.  At one point around midnight, one of the stewardesses asked me if I’d like some coffee.  Sure thing!  I was expecting something in a Styrofoam cup with a plastic stir stick and powdered creamer.

Oh no….That’s not how things are done on Cakewalk.  About 10 minutes later she returned with a fine china cup and saucer containing freshly brewed cappuccino with carefully layered foam and little cinnamon sprinkles along side a sterling silver spoon and a complete setup with a couple of types of sugar and other various sweeteners (all the packets printed with the Cakewalk logo, incidentally).  Might’ve been the single best cup of coffee I’ve ever had….

Anyway…  Many of the images from this gig are currently featured in a 12 page spread in the December/January 2011 issue of ShowBoats International.  Pick up a copy to learn more about her.  Other yachting magazines from around the world will be featuring these images of Cakewalk in the near future.

Here are some additional images from my time on Cakewalk. 

Enjoy…

AF

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.

‘The Sandbox,’ a home in Palm Beach I shot for Karen True, turned out to produce some of my favorite images in my portflolio.  This house had just been recently completed and the whole place, inside and out, looked like it had just come out of an interior design magazine…or at least a Pottery Barn catalog.  South Florida is overloaded with Mediterranean styled / stucco walled / tile roofed homes.  This place, with it’s shake roof, wood siding, and Cape Cod-ish style architecture is certainly unique around these parts and was a welcome change of pace from what I normally encounter in Palm Beach.

Since the property is surrounded by ficus hedges, there’s no real benefit to intensely lighting the rooms with tons of watt-seconds to match the brightness of the view outside the windows.  So I shot most of the rooms with very subtle fill flash from a couple strobes, or we shot 100% ambient.  The intent is showcase the ambiance of the rooms as they look to someone who is actually standing there.  I love shooting ambient, but it doesn’t always suit the assginment or the subject. 

Which brings me to the next thing I love…twilight photography.

The Magic Hour is referred to by many photographers as the ideal time to photograph anything that happens to be outside.  And it’s true.  There’s nothing like a portrait or landscape (or a building, for that matter) taken with that diffuse, golden sunlight falling on your subject.  But with twilight architectural photography, it’s really more like the Magic 3 Minutes.  Beacause that’s the amount of time you have to make the perfect twilight shot.  It happens about 15 minutes or so after the sun has gone beyond the horizon and the light changes that quickly as it gets darker and darker. Once the ambient exposure precisely matches the exposure of the windows to theinterior of the home, that’s when you get your shot.   3 minutes too early and you don’t get the ‘tungten glow.’ 3 minutes too late and the windows can become overexposed and you will lose the all-important detail in those areas.

Don’t get me wrong.  You can capture perfectly passable twilight shots for about 20 or even 30 minutes after the sun goes down.  There are lots of techniques to capture twilights before or after that perfect time, like supplemental lighting, exposure blending, and HDR.  And I proudly use those techniques as well.  But having patience and perfect timing will produce the perfect twilight in one click of the shutter, in one frame, once you get to that Magic 3 Minutes.  This gig gave me that perfect twilight and it has been among my favorites to date.

This home is right at 5000 sq ft, has 4 bedrooms, 6 1/2 baths and is offered by Karen True of The Corcoran Realty Group at $4,395,000.

Bobby Goodnough, an agent for Linda A. Gary Real Estate,  called me up and said he had a luxury property he needed to shoot in Lake Worth.  My initial thought was, “luxury real estate…in Lake Worth? Huh?”  Lake Worth, especially the Town of Lake Worth, is not particularly known for luxury of any kind.  Don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of good folks that live there.  There’s just not many Mercedes S-Classes or BMW 7 Series running up and down North “A” Street.  But then it quickly occurs to me that the eastern edge of the city limits ends right at the Intracoastal waterfront, where all the high-dollar action is.  That’s where we were headed.

The front of this home is actually rather understated…very classy, but not over the top.  The real story was when you walked in the front door.  This home is meticulously appointed in every category and every room…from the grand salon, complete with two seperate sitting areas, to the powder room off the kitchen with what appeared to be a hand-carved cherry and marble vanity.  It turns out that every detail in every room has been put together by a world-famous designer by the name of William Eubanks.  Once I got through the stunning and pristine  interior, I opened up the massive french doors that connect to a huge loggia, perfect pool, expansive back yard and private beach.   After taking my initial walk-through, to plan my shots, it was apparent the photography was going to need to be perfect in order to showcase this place the way it deserved.

Technically, my biggest challenges here were that the main rooms are immense, especially the grand salon.  It was obvious that lighting the room with strobes would prove to be quite difficult, mainly because there’s nowhere to hide them, and I’m fighting huge windows blasting in tons of sunlight the whole length of that room.  With the time and budgetary limitations of this job, I made the decision to shoot the salon and the enormous kitchen all ambient.  The compromise is that the room ambiance will look natural but we’ll lose a detailed view out the windows.  Since the interior design is really the star of the show, I chose to favor the room and not necessarily the view. 

The bedrooms and other smaller rooms were shot with my typical 2 strobe setup, one on one side as the main light source, and another opposite the first set 1 or 2 stops less as fill.  Both are bounced off the wall or ceiling to give an even, soft light to the rooms.  Bobby didn’t initially request any twilight shots.  But I knew that this house, especially the pool and surrounding landscaping, would be perfect to showcase the luxury that this place is all about.  So I offered to come back and photograph the exterior and the grand salon on spec.  He agreed, the photos turned out fantastic, and have been a staple in my portfolio since.

This home is right at 6500 sq ft, has 5 bedrooms, 5 1/2 bathrooms and is offered by Bobby Goodnough of Linda A. Gary Real Estate for $2,495,000.

This is the first property I shot for Lang Realty, and it is a gorgeous place to work with a new client.  Right on the Intracoastal with a beautiful courtyard pool, this place is a stunner.   Photographically, it didn’t present too much of a challenge.  In fact, the high ceilings in grand salon made for beautiful soft light bounced in from 3 strobes.  The kitchen was made to be photographed, and the halogen downlights in the ceiling were so perfectly designed, that I didn’t need any supplementary lighting at all.  I only had to correct the blue color cast from the natural light coming in fromhuge window on the left in post-processing.  Otherwise, this room looks just like it did right out of the camera.  This one was a lot of fun to shoot.

This property has 7200 sq ft, 4 bedrooms, 4 1/2 baths and is offered by Elaine Russell and Charles Christopher Lynn of the Lang Realty Luxury Division in the East Boca Raton office at $4,595,000.