Tripping on Asphalt
Currently viewing the category:
"clients"
This post is a recurring feature I call ‘Which One?’ where I ask you to help me decide which is the stronger, more compelling image. Usually my ‘Which One?’ helps me determine which image to present to a client. Today it’s just my own interest. (This is also the shot in the opposite direction of the fog in my last post.)
So it’s also the beginning of a potentially new feature here, which I haven’t quite named yet. The concept is simple: it’s my favorite image from a shoot, and I’m certain the client is never going to use it. Basically, if I don’t post it here, no one’s ever going to see it, and it will live, alone and forgotten, in the cobwebs of my memory. If I remember it at all. How sad… This one, in particular will not see the light of day because Architects like blue sky. Period. And I took these same shots 5 hours later with an incredible blue sky, but I’m crazy about these comparatively so I’m not even gonna show you the blue sky.
I love these shots because, for me, they really capture New England in March. And I can see that charm without it being cloyingly sweet.
Which one would you choose? I’d love to hear.
{Update: I was totally wrong. The client chose both of these photos yesterday!}
Here are some previous ‘Which One?’ posts in case you are new here and would like to explore…
I can clutter up a surface in 2 second flat. Yet, somehow, I never tire of greedily perusing images from design magazines. The textures, colors, and organization of the spaces soothe me, so it makes sense that I’m so passionate about creating interior images. My neurosis about clear surfaces, even hidden, private surfaces, explains why these are a couple of my favorite photos {that no one but you are likely ever going to see, because who publishes a pantry?} from a recent kitchen shoot of mine with the lovely and talented Yvonne Ferris of Yvonne Ferris Interiors.
I’d love to show you the rest of this sumptuous kitchen, but you’re going to have to accept these as a sneak peek… They were taken at the end of the day as I was thinking about wrapping things up. With so many moments of inspiration in that room, I just couldn’t put away my equipment.
It’s the styling and organization of that pantry that gets me. It’s so compelling, right down to the color and packaging of the products. The next day I set up my fridge in the same meticulous manner with our new groceries. And that lasted a hot minute before my husband swooped in and wrecked it. *sigh* To his credit, he mostly allows me to retain my OCD kitchen cabinet organization, and without too much grousing, even though I’m sure he thinks I’m certifiable. But we don’t have a pantry.
Which brings me back to my envy of this pantry. There I am, setting up the first shot, fully immersed in my process and enjoying every moment in the well-designed, clean, gorgeous space I’m inhabiting, if only for that day, when a trap door slams open right there in the floor, the stool goes flying, and a workman shouts ‘hello!’ scaring the shit out of me. Go ahead. Look. There’s the trap door. Right there.
Boo! This is not your kitchen, little one! Could you die? Yah. I almost did.
This breathtaking, Beinfield, steel fireplace, which I had the pleasure to photograph, is helping. But not as much as my brand new bottle of Marshmallow Smirnoff.
As I sit here working on updates to The Dance Collective web site (while missing a class at The Dance Collective), I am reminded of how rewarding it is to work with my clients. As primarily an Architectural Photographer, the vast majority of my clients are creatives by nature and trade: architects, interior designers, builders, magazines, etc. and so they approach shoots with the same creative energy they approach everything else in life. Even my rogue Clients, including Amanda and Enrique of the The Dance Collective are Creatives. And, seriously, it make for a way more interesting day, or night, as it was in the case of this particular shoot.
During my interiors shoots, I am a focused perfectionist. I shoot directly to the computer and double and triple check everything from the technical aspects of things including my lighting and camera settings, through composition, and a plethora of other artistic decisions. For example, we might move a chair multiple times to get the shot just right. Props are swapped in and out. Books, pillows, ottomans, furniture. Candles or lamps may be lit and extinguished. Until we have that moment. The one that everyone feels is just the right balance. It’s all way more exacting a process than one would ever imagine.
With people it’s a little different. A lot different. There are countless decisions that are made in order to achieve the final shot. But they don’t necessarily build with each shot better than the previous. You can’t get everyone to achieve the same expression, the same posture, or the same grace in every frame. People are unruly. For me, it’s less relaxing and a little more ‘a wing and a prayer.’
So instead of shot 29 being 28 shots more sophisticated than shot 1, sometimes shot 29 looks like this.
And that’s when I’m hoping the bottle of champagne is handy.
We’ve been super fortunate over here at Sequined Asphault Studio, and some exciting news almost got lost in the shuffle. While we were on our honeymoon, Beinfield Architecture received a 2011 AIA Connecticut Design Award for their new House in Ridgefield!
Congrats to Andrew Bartolotta AIA, Bruce Beinfield FAIA and the rest of the Project Team. I was thrilled for the opportunity to photograph the project and had a great time working with the Client. There is tons of inspiration and creative genius, attributable to both Architect and Client, throughout this deceptively simple barn with something modern and surprising at every turn.
Hire Michele
MS Trani’s Instagram
MS Trani’s Pinterest
On the Nightstand
