Creekside Residence, Kerhonkson, NY
Location: 5917 Highway 44-55, Kerhonkson, NY
Client: Upstate Curious, Bree Chambers, Joseph Nadeau
An exciting new client
Note: This home is still for sale at the time of writing. Check it out.
This was my first shoot for the Upstate Curious team of Compass Real Estate, after years of watching them grow and hoping to shoot for them one day.
I met Megan shortly after she started her (now significant) Upstate Curious Instagram account, with an eye toward appealing to NYC buyers moving up the Hudson Valley, but the timing wasn’t right for us to work together then. Fast forward several years later, and I’ve left the Hudson Valley for a closer-to-family spot in New Jersey, but the mountains still call to me, and I yearn for the air, light, and breathtaking vistas of the Catskills.
Recently I reached out to an old friend, Kate Quintard, who I used to work with at Nooklyn when I was their primary photographer. She has since moved upstate from NYC and has become well established in the real estate scene up there, and as a part of the Upstate Curious team. She was able to put me in touch at the perfect time. Home sales have been exploding up there for several years, and all the local photographers are totally booked.
Enter me, who is starved for getting back upstate, and the stars align.
Beautiful Visual Language
UC has developed a visual aethetic and language that closely aligns with how I like to shoot, giving me the option to have a bit more fun with the images, and lean a little closer into my architectural and design photography skills, with room for a little bit of editorial look to the imagery.
I might not be able to get away with QUITE as dark and moody as I dream of, but they’ve offered me lattitude to create tighter, more graphically interesting compositions, and actually requested that I steer well clear of your typical ultra-ultra-wide shots in favor of something more beautiful.
This is a very welcome change, and gets me where I want to be when it comes to shooting real estate.
Landscape Photography Novice
I feel like this could be something special with the right editing. Maybe.
Being in nature is among my favorite ways to spend my time, and while the focus of my photography career has mostly been in the built environment, I do strive to take better photos when I’m among the natural world. So every opportunity like this gives me a chance to develop my eye for nature imagery. I consider it significantly more challenging, as most scenes in nature, like these, are totally chaotic, with stuff everywhere.
Many landscape photographers park themselves in one place and wait for hours for the right light and conditions, returning to their chosen location many days in a row. I deeply respect that commitment - but that’s generally not the setup I’m there for in.
In the case of making this creek look beautiful, it was more a matter of ‘what can I get right now, with the light I have, and how can I do a bit of post to make that better?’
They’re not as stellar as I might have liked, but given the time I spent, and the conditions I had, I'm fond enough of these. But, like usual, I’m probably being unduly hard on myself. But, how else do you improve if not by striving as hard as you can to be much better than you currently are?
These were also experiments with handheld long exposures, the slowest being 1/30th of a second, which really isn’t that slow. Next time I’ll push it a little harder, or get out the tripod and really make the water smudge away. I was just looking at an inspiration image where the water is totally blurry, and I love it. Gonna need to bust that tripod out next time.
Reminders of Childhood Magic
I love photographing streams like this, because they remind me of playing Magic The Gathering as a child with my brothers, and one of favorite cards, mostly because of the artwork on it: Stream of Life.
I remember it more vividly and magically than the image, but that’s how rose colored glasses go, right?
There’s another version with an elf woman drinking water out of the stream, and I was CERTAIN this looked different than the version I found when I looked for it. Maybe I’m thinking of another card. Can’t be sure.
I recall her being on the right side of the frame, and everything being much more colorful, and there being bright specular highlights. I thought that my stream photo was inspired by that card… buy maybe the vision in my head was inspired by my own creation?
While looking that card up to include on this post, I found a few others with artwork I really love, that also inform my wanderlust, and my love of nature art. Green was by far my favorite color to play, because I got to look at all this beautiful forest artwork as I played.
Let’s return to our creek, and the house thereupon.
These creek images actually remind me of a favorite photo of mine, from a camping trip many years ago, but less than an hour away from this home. It’s from a little trail called Biscuit Brook, which runs along the eponymous brook. I should really have a separate post with those images. Maybe I’ll make that now — (hours pass) — I did, I’ll schedule it to post next week after this one.
Look forward to it, I certainly am.
Collection
Other selected images from this shoot for you to enjoy:
Camera Kit Used:
Fujifilm X-H2
Fujifilm XF 16-80mm F4 R OIS WR + B+W CPL
Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II
DJI Mavic 2 Pro w/ Hasselblad L1D-20C + 28mm f/2.8 + Polar Pro ND/PL
Manfrotto 055 Carbon Fiber Tripod + 410 Junior Geared Head