BIO

I started as many people do, taking a photography course in high school and also a summer course at a local community arts center. After high school, I joined the US Navy and was fortunate enough to find a position as a photographer. I went through eleven weeks of intensive training, after having completed nine weeks of boot camp, learning everything from the basics of light and camera operation to portraiture and processing. My training continued throughout my enlistment and after serving for almost five years on two different ships, I left the service to attend college. I received both an Associates Degree in Business Administration and Bachelors Degree in Marketing. While attending school, I worked in several different photo labs and as an assistant for a wedding photographer, as well as serving three more years in the Naval Reserves. After graduation in 1997, my wife and I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where I was approached by a general contractor, for whom my wifes best friend worked, and who needed several projects photographed. Thus, began my career as an architectural photographer. We have since established ourselves in the Napa Valley, which is centrally located with convenient access to all of Northern California.

INFO

Architectural Photography is a very small niche in the world photography. It also tends to be a very specialized area, rarely is any photographer required to bring all of his/her equipment to a location and then need to use nearly all of it. All work is obviously done on location, therefore, all the equipment must be portable and there tends to be a lot of it. My clients are usually amazed by the amount of equipment that is needed and the amount of set-up that is required. Normally, the setup I would need, in an average home, would take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour-and-a-half depending on difficulty of the situation and the space involved. Two examples are Residential Interior 20 that took about an hour and fifteen minutes to setup and used two lights for the foreground, two small flashes for the hallway, two lights for the dining room, and a single light for the wine cellar doors in the background. For the photo Residential Interior 6, all that was used was a single small on camera flash to add a bit more definition to the relief artwork below the tub surround. If enough supplemental light is not used to light a room, the light sources that are already present will appear too bright. I.e., if a window is visible in the photo and there isnt enough supplemental light the window will appear to be nothing more than a bright spot in the image with no detail visible through it. Though in some instances, this is needed if the view through the window is undesirable.

I usually compare my work to completing a jig saw puzzle made of light. I know how I want the photograph to appear. Its then a matter of determining where all of the pieces of light need to go. In this case, the pieces are my equipment and accessories and what the location actually contains; lighting, windows, furnishings, the weather, etc. Like the puzzle pieces, each component of the image needs to be in the right place for the photograph to look the way it

should. This can be more difficult than it seems, especially if there are numerous surfaces that can reflect the light back into the camera lens and disclose how the scene was lit and where the photographer was standing when the photo was taken. Sometimes these surfaces cannot be avoided, and this is when digital manipulation can be a life saver.

In the past several years I have become an avid and proficient Photoshop user. Photoshop allows me to remove or replace objects, change colors, fix minor flaws in the image, etc. the possibilities are almost endless. A good example of my Photoshop work can be seen in this photo ResExt4.jpg, there was no grass and the pavement contained numerous cracks, water, and mud. The most difficult part was retaining the depth of the shadows from the tree on the grass and making it look natural. I shoot using a 4"x5" view camera loaded with transparency (slide) film, have this processed at a professional lab, then scan the images myself. Why do I still use film? Two reasons, quality and cost. Film still produces the highest quality images and the images can then be used in numerous ways to produce any final product needed. It is still considerably less expensive than any digital capture device on the market today, and the only devices that come close to the quality of film can only be used to capture scenes that are perfectly still (no movement) and cost more than $30,000. The digital images allow my clients multiple uses from the same scan. At different resolutions, these images can be posted to the web, used in word processing/presentation documents, and can produce photographic quality prints up to 20"x24" or larger. I normally include four different file formats and resolutions levels of each image I send to clients on CD-R/DVD-R disks. The combination of using film and digital images produces the highest possible image quality and usability for the client. If you have any questions or would like to schedule a job or even just an appointment to scout potential projects, please call or email me.

 

Client List

Brothers Custom Windows & Doors
San Carlos

Chinberg Construction
Napa

CSI Construction
Redwood City

Hayes Group Architects
Redwood City

Hearn Construction
Vacaville

Holiday Inn Express
San Francisco Bay Area

S&N Architects
Palo Alto

Soul Building Systems
Cotati

Target Stores
Northern California

VanderToolen Assoc.
Napa

W.L.Butler, Inc.
Redwood City