OUR PROCESS
It takes two people to
do this at a high level
We work closely with our clients to ensure we fully understand their vision and publication needs. Knowing how to schedule efficiently around good natural light is a big part of the scouting process. Also, it's an important time for us to learn about the important aspects and how we plan to embellish them.
We often shoot over multiple sunrises and sunsets to get the best quality and direction of light for each space. For big spaces and big windows, we bring large-scale light control. We prefer to take our time to collaborate on compositions using multiple lights, but sometimes split up and cover more ground when working in restrictive time slots.
Having two creative perspectives, double the attention to detail, and twice the eyes to review final edits all go a long way towards making images that excel at being themselves. More importantly, it's our shared dialog about what the story of each space is - and the motivation of the light coming in - that takes our images from looking better than reality to telling the story the space intends.
BEFORE / AFTER COMPARISONS
If we’ve done our job well, the photo will look beautiful and natural. You shouldn’t be able to notice that we’ve done anything at all. In reality, we often deal with blown-out windows, dark spaces, and mixed color temperatures. Only in comparing the “before/after” photos can you see where the process leads. No matter the situation, we bring the experience and tools required to show your spaces in their best light, one surface at a time.
Complicated spaces: In the photo above, we had to correct for mixed color temperatures, huge blown-out windows, glaring floors, and inconsistent light directionality.
Emphasizing a design element: The red wall is the star. To make it pop, we eliminated the unwanted glare from the wall and brought in our own light to embellish its striking geometric shape.
Telling a visual story: We wanted to make this scene look like a fire-lit cabin, so we motivated our lighting to radiate from the TV fire. To emphasize the warm interior feel even further, we brought in a long exposure to add a blue kick off the furniture and light streaks from the cars.
Making the best of bad weather: It was raining during this shoot in Portland. We combined one earlier exposure of an especially brooding sky with a blue hour exposure to bring out the cozy interior lights.
