Behind the Scenes: Post-Production with Perkins+Will of their recently completed ShareNow office project in Austin

Austin has proven to be an ideal location for tech companies to office, whether it be as their main headquarters or as a regional location. As a result, there has been a drive to create fun and dynamic work spaces in the area that foster creativity, flexibility and fun for the companies employees and it has been a pleasure to be a part of showcasing many of them.

One of the last projects we shot in 2019 was this great space in East Austin designed by the local Perkins+Will office for their client, ShareNow. ShareNow (formerly Car2Go) has located their new offices right in the thick of East Austin, a thriving neighborhood that encompasses much of what Austin is all about just minutes away from Downtown. The office features a variety of dynamic spaces, but none more fun than this employee lounge, featuring some beautiful furnishings and a balcony overlooking East 6th Street.

When we arrived at the project, there was a beautiful mid-morning light streaming into the space, so we knew that we had to start with this shot first, leaving us to scramble a bit to fine tune the staging of all the furniture and related objects. In this case, because the office was still fairly new, this also sent several of the design team members scrambling throughout the space to collect a few additional objects from around the office in order to help populate the shelves in our view. While they focussed on those items, my assistant and I focussed on the big picture items such as the placement of furniture and rugs, and how everything related to one another. Lighting wise, we added some touches of lights to help shape the furniture and large light fixtures as well as clean up the color of the ceiling and other warm finishes. The end result shows a bright, inviting area for employees to have a break from their day, change work environments, have informal meetings and more.

Lastly, in this video I touch on what’s coming next on the YouTube channel, which will feature a behind the scenes look at the composition, staging, photography and post-processing of an interior vignette that I’ll be doing from my home during the stay-at-home orders put in place under the current circumstances.

Behind the Scenes: Post-Production with Page of their recently completed Baker Ripley East Aldine Campus Project

Page’s Houston office recently completed a very engaging campus project for Baker Ripley’s East Aldine location. The project includes many unique spaces intended to help the surrounding community with support facilities for projects and businesses that members may otherwise not have access to including a fab lab (think makers space), commercial kitchen and much more.

For the second video in my YouTube series, I thought I would share a technique that many architectural photographer’s employ, which is the stitch panoramic. A stitch pano is a way to create a larger viewing area than available from a particular focal length by combining different frames using the movements that are possible with either a technical camera or tilt-shift lenses on a DSLR. One challenging part of employing this technique that those of us who are using a DSLR with tilt-shift lenses experience is a slight misalignment of those frames due to parallax which results from the movements happening in the lens while the sensor remains in one place. With technical cameras you are able to shift the sensor around while the glass remains in the same place, allowing for much simpler aligning. I mention this because some people will likely notice this slight discrepancy in the video, which I later went back and corrected for the final image.

This image was created in order to show a community room and its relationship with a couple of the other buildings on the campus and the courtyard that separates them. The space had great, large windows that provided lovely natural light. We aimed to emphasize the natural light a bit with the use of strobes while also cleaning up some of the color cast. Adding a couple of models (which included one of the designer’s from Page and the expert billiards hand of my asssistant, Spencer Young) provides a sense of scale and more emphasis on the spaces functions. The room was a little cluttered from daily use when we arrived, so we spent a fair amount of time clearing some unwanted items out and getting things just how we wanted them for the image. Staging also meant getting the pool table just where we wanted it so it would anchor this one point perspective, creating some symmetry in an otherwise asymmetrical space.

Introducing Our New YouTube Channel!

For some time now, I’ve been sharing some timelapses of my post-production process on Instagram as a way to share a peak behind the scenes at what my process looks like after a shoot has been completed and moves into the computer. As camera technology has evolved, so too have the techniques that many of use to create the final product that the world sees. Throughout the development of my career, I have benefited greatly from other photographers willingness to share their techniques and processes, whether it be through online tutorials, informal conversations or working together in person via workshops or assisting. I am creating this channel as an outlet to give a little more insight into my own process in effort to help other photographers who may find it useful and also to allow those outside of our industry to see some of what is often a largely hidden aspect of our job, despite being crucial to creating our end product. Outlets such as online forums, in person meetups and social media platforms like Instagram have allowed architectural and interior photographers to be connected like never before and I continue to be amazed at the camaraderie we have developed across the globe that offers tons of encouragement and ways to evolve within our business. Hopefully this channel can help to add to that sense of community and openness in some small way.

For this first video, the image is of an entry vestibule of the new Whole Foods offices in Austin, Texas designed by IA Interior Architects. The space was very tight, resulting in a rare interior shot using a very wide angle in order to capture the important elements of the design that myself and the design team wanted to showcase. The scene has several challenging aspects to it that anyone who photographs commercial interiors will be very familiar with including challenging reflections, several interconnected spaces, varying light sources and of course, those pesky exit signs. As far as staging and preparation goes, the shot was fairly simple, requiring only minimal staging of the furnishings in the main break area beyond the glass doors and a chair in the phone room. Since most of the items in the lobby are relatively fixed, we just had to tweak a few things so they looked right in camera and then were off to the races to capture the space.

Since this is the first video in the series, I thought I would give a little insight on the process we use when we’re on set in order to answer some questions that I’m sure will come up. Generally speaking, when approaching a commercial interior space, the first thing we do after identifying the angle that best describes a space we are capturing is to stage any existing or temporary furniture and objects so they look best in camera. This can often be meticulous work and requires an understanding of how objects relate to one another and how people might interact with them in an image while not causing distractions or clutter. Once this is complete, we will run through a series of frames using ambient light, sometimes employing techniques to control the available light so that we can get the best result. After that is when we’ll usually bring in artificial lighting if needed to clean up unwanted color casts, better shape objects and sometimes create daylight when it’s not there. The next and last step is to bring in models when they are being used, which is a great way to give a space some life while also showing the scale and intended use. With this and subsequent videos, I hope to shed some light on how I then bring all of these pieces together to create a final image. For a little more insight on my process, visit my interview with Veeral Patel with AP Almanac.