250 Gold Street - Residential Real Estate
250 Gold is a new 13-Story luxury residential tower seated in the bustle of Downtown Brooklyn with an assortment of apartments available for lease. It features a rich set of amenities, including an intimate screening theater, a warm and inviting sauna, a luxurious steam room, full featured gym, and more.
Nooklyn brought me down to the city to create images of two newly appointed ‘real estate showrooms’ (staged apartments). The objective of the staged apartment it to showcase a potential layout for the unit, to make clear the possibilities of the small space. If you’ve ever walked through an IKEA showroom floor, you’ve likely been blown away at just how much life can be held in small spaces - and the wonderful intimacy that comes with that. Sure, small apartments have their drawbacks - but it’s often the name of the game in dense urban areas. And these units are still significantly more spacious than many I’ve seen first hand in Manhattan.
When I arrived at the apartments on a dull overcast day, I saw that neither of them were going to be getting a great deal of sunlight, even if it were a bright day. So I embraced that look and went with a lighting scheme of warm light painting to create the mood of a cozy evening at home. I even went so far as to photoshop candle flames on to the candles, and to light the table and surrounding as if there were warm candle light spilling off of them, which was a fun little trick to play around with.
Light painting, as it’s called, involves keeping a camera shutter open long enough to sweep what is basically a bright flashlight across a chosen area of the scene, so you get an image with really soft moody and delicate lighting. It works particularly well for bringing out warm wood tones that can often feel too sharp if a quick, bright flash of light is used. You’ll see this most in the photos of the kitchen cabinets and the bathroom vanity.
After finishing up the apartments I moved on to the amenity and common spaces. Nooklyn already had some basic ultra-wide ultra-bright ultra-real-estate photos of these spaces that another photographer shot, so I took some time to create some more intimate images with more controlled lighting. The 260 Gold lobby (the second entrance to the building, this one actually on Gold Street, as opposed to the entrance labeled 250 Gold that’s actually on Tillary Street) was a favorite because the warm brown tones of the wood, and metals, along with the gold accents, played very nicely against the blue light of the evening outside. I also really love the light on the wooden slats on the top right part of the image - I reminded me of some very moody spotlighting I’ve seen in Japanese fine dining restaurants like EN Japanese Brasserie and SHO Shaun Hergatt.
Another favorite image to make was of the theater, where I did really extensive light painting to show off all the lovely wood grain throughout the room, as well as adding light to accentuate the plush seating in the dim room. It was an enjoyable, though time-consuming, task. That said, I did rush through the angle looking back toward the seating and the back of the room, because my tripod and camera were set up right in front of the door, and I was quite concerned that if someone came barreling into the room, my camera would be smashed to the floor before anything could be done. I could have done with the peace of mind of having an assistant standing outside like a bouncer so I didn’t have to worry. Fortunately, I got the shot wrapped up without any interruptions and no danger to my equipment.
The remainder of the amenity / common space photos are were all done with available light, because they all had really wonderful interior lighting that I felt no need to modify or distract from. In all, it is one of the more beautiful buildings I’ve shot for Nooklyn, and one I’m very proud to have worked on. In fact, there is much more here to shoot that I didn't get to, but Nooklyn has all the photos they need of this project, and I have little occasion to go back down there just to make portfolio content, when I’ve already got so many images I’m happy with out of the spot. I do wish I’d been able to photograph the steam room, because I really do have an affinity for spa life, but it was in full use while I was there, so there would have been nothing to see but a cloudy mist and some folks that weren’t there to be swimsuit models.
I did a second shoot here about a month later, when they rotated the showrooms to some other units, but those I took a more basic ultra-wide, ultra-bright approach to show to focus more on how the furniture fit in the apartments. I’ll save those for a separate project post, since they don’t fit the moody lighting and intimate angles of this set, which I much prefer.
