Last Friday I was presented with quite the challenge… a 8,690 square foot challenge to be exact.  This beautiful 5 bedroom 4 1/2 bathroom home located off Walnut Grove is certainly the biggest house I’ve had the opportunity to photograph.

Summing up the experience:

The street name is very fitting considering the neighborhood with black fences, rolling hills of horse farms, and scattered ponds.  Just getting out there, the drive itself is real quiet and quite nice. After getting the exteriors with the tripod set up clear across the street, it was time to get inside and get to work.  Upon entering the house to have a look around, the mood shifted pretty quickly from excited and impressed to a little overwhelmed.  This place was huge.  I did an initial walk through to get an idea of the different rooms and spaces, and to start thinking of angles and perspectives. Some rooms had all kinds of natural light and others had dark walls without much light at all… the master bathroom was surrounded with mirrors… the basement had very limited lighting with many light bulbs out… all things to be thinking about before just starting to snap pictures.

I started on the second floor getting two bedrooms (three if you count the basketball court), the laundry and the views looking down into the front hall and family room, and systematically moved down and across the house.  The first floor master suite was beautiful, and the master bathroom was a little challenging with glass and mirrors on three of the walls.  Moving to the living room, great room and kitchen, the ceilings must have been 30′ tall.  It was important to get the whole space, but still pay attention to the details of the fireplaces, cabinets, counter tops, trim, fixtures and chandeliers.   After the first floor, I was left with the basement to get the theater room, second kitchen, huge full bath, pool room and game rooms.  Down here the lighting was tricky with limited light coming in, and plenty of shadows and dark areas with many of the light bulbs out.  I tried different angles and flash settings, some bouncing the flash off walls or ceilings and some i set the flash to remote off-camera.

Overall I was there for almost two hours and ended up with 285 RAW images to take home and look over.  Every photographer has their system and style… I like to be thorough, maybe too thorough.  But, I’d rather have too many to pick from then miss something, or have to choose the better of two bad shots for a room or space.  The 285 RAW pictures were cut to 66 final edited images to turn in, and looking back over them I’m very pleased with the roll.  You can always look back and say I wish i did this or that a little differently… I wish I had done automatic bracketing for this particular room, or set the flash differently for that one… I think everyone could agree with the whole hindsight 20/20 thing.

Bottom line, I believe I did the best job I could with what I had, and it was quite the experience to shoot such an amazing home.  I look forward to the next opportunity to work with such an awesome space.

Some highlights from 4000 Real Quiet Ln:

Friday was a busy day for AB Photo, two houses and a total of just under 10,500 square feet of living space were photographed.  Starting with the first one, 3560 Forrest Spring Ct is a two story single family home out near Hamburg.  The Real Estate agent, Judy Speakes and the homeowner did an excellent job getting the house ready for photos, and each room was given plenty of attention to make the house appear as neutral and cleaned up as possible.  When this happens the photos turn out so much better in my opinion, as home shoppers are looking at the fundamental layout and structure of the home rather than pictures of someone else’s stuff.  The shoot went great, and an hour after the last photo was taken, the full roll was shared with the Realtor in a Google drive folder for posting to the internet.  The second home photographed was just over 8,600 square feet, took quite a bit more time and is still being edited, those will be shown in a a later post.

Some highlights from 3560 Forrest Spring Ct.:

Yesterday I made the trip down to Harrodsburg, Ky to photograph a listing for a client.  It’s such a beautiful drive on the Bluegrass Pkwy and down Highway 127 into Harrodsburg.  This listing is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath 1,549 square foot single-family home located at 208 Harrods Trace.  The solid 15 minutes it took the train to pass through downtown at the corner of 127 and Factory Street gave me a little time to really soak in and appreciate the feeling you get in a small town.    Once I arrived, the shoot went about as smoothly as it could, I stuck to the standard flash photography and stayed away from automatic bracketing this time.  Insert the sun starting to go down, spouse getting home from work and hungry chidren…. it was important to work quickly and respect the homeowner’s schedule.  Post-editing last night I was pleased with the results, a reminder that with proper use of lighting and flash, correct camera settings and the right perspective sometimes simplicity is the best way.  It’s not about the subject.  Not every home I photograph will be a 8,000 sqaure ft mansion with 30′ vaulted ceilings and hanging glass chandeliers.  The job isn’t to make a house look bigger or better, the job is to capture what’s there the best way possible and provide house hunters with quality clear and accurate photographs. There’s a house out there for everyone, I want to help people looking online find the right one.

AB Photo Real Estate Photography