June Homes, Philadelphia, PA

Startup June Homes brought me down to Philidelphia to produce images of several of their apartments for lease in a building they'd just launched.

It’s only the second time I’ve been to Philidelphia, and the first time I was there working. I really enjoyed it, in particular the area around the Fishtown neighborhood, which seems to be the hip part of town. But I also ventured downtown to the Amtrak station and saw lots of lovely buildings lit up at night.

I could definitely spend more time in Philly.

Boston Corners Acreage, Millerton, NY

It was breathtaking.
80+ acres of rolling hills and marshlands teeming with life. Tall green mountains flanking both sides of the vibrant Harlem Valley. A lovely rail trail skirted one side of the massive property, too alluring not to explore. I was here to make photos and and a video for Andrew Gates’ listing.

 
 

Subject: 80+ Acres of Land for sale
Client: Andrew Gates, Houlihan Lawrence
Location: Boston Corners, Millerton, NY
Project Date: August 8th, 2021
Client Link: Boston Corners Road, Millerton

It began with breakfast, as all great days should.

oakhurst diner.jpg

I met up with Andrew in Millerton, New York, where we got a quick breakfast at the Oakhurst Diner, a favorite of his.

Millerton is a cute little town, most notable to me for having the Harney & Sons tea store, which I returned to for some delicious ice tea after finishing up this shoot.

Andrew wanted a photo of Millerton itself to add into the photo series to contextualize the land, so while we were having brunch I sent Skyguy up and took a few quick photos. A dog at the next table over was wildly intrigued.

After the quick bite we grabbed some Iced Oat Lattes, another seeming favorite of Andrew’s, and drove up to the parcel. He gave me a tour of the land and we met up with the owner for a brief chat.

The land itself is a beautiful hilly plot in the middle of a valley looking up at beautiful mountain ranges on both sides. The Berkshire Taconics are to the east, with Round Ball and the Overmountain Conservation Area to the west.

While looking at the map now to do some research, I realize I missed the opportunity to drive in to the Berkshire Taconics to explore. I’ll make a point of doing that the next time I’m in the area.

I did, however, spend a lot of time walking the rail trail in order to get additional photo angles and video footage of the property, and that made for a very enjoyable day of being out in a beautiful setting on a lovely summer day.

45-57 Davis Street, Long Island City, Queens, NY

Davis was a significant project for Nooklyn, a tech-forward real estate brokerage that has long been a great client of mine. It was the biggest building they’d listed to date, with 180 luxury apartments and full suite of amenities, located off a side road in a quickly developing corner of Long Island City where the massive Sunnyside Yard revitalization project is under way. I was brought in to create high caliber imagery for their investor portfolio, in addition to a bulk of images for the real estate listings.

 
Lobby, Under Stair View, full res-1.jpg

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Subject: 45-57 Davis Street
Client: Nooklyn
Location: Long Island City, Queens, New York City
Project Date: May 6-July 20, 2021
Client Link: 45-57 Davis

 

Nooklyn came to me with a vision for raising the bar on the imagery they normally use for their most important new developments.

At the time, this represented the largest building Nooklyn had represented, so we set out to produce some stellar imagery both to showcase the building, and as a showpiece for Nooklyn’s own project portfolio.

This shoot involved multiple trips to the city over several months to create images of the building in several stages of completion, including creating imagery of the showrooms, vacant apartments, amenities, hallways, exterior, and the surrounding neighborhood of Long Island City.

Because of the chaotic and rushed nature of real estate in NYC, the shoots often involved just coming to the building to see what is currently ready for photography. Not the ideal setup, but something we were able to make work.

Shoot 1: May 6th

I drove down the city early in the morning so we’d have an abundance of daylight to work with. Due to a miscommunication I thought the building was further along than it was, and that we’d be shooting absolutely everything that day. Turns out it was just that the showrooms had been furnished and they were still being cleaned. So, we used the time to scout and tour the building, then take some rooftop and exterior photos.

 
 
 
 

For reasons that I forgot to inquire about, there was only a single unit, aside from the showrooms, that wasn't covered in construction paper and debris that day. Maybe it was meant to be one of the first showrooms, or maybe they just wanted one clean standard unit to show off. In any case, I took some quick and simple photos of that one to kick it off.

 
 
 
 

After that, there was little to do but wait for the showrooms to be cleaned. So, Moiz and I walked down the street to grab some breakfast and coffee at Partner’s Coffee Roasters. I’ve actually been to this location several times thanks to previous trips to the city for my wife’s work, in which she used some Hilton hotel points to stay right around the corner.

After a quick breakfast, Moiz had to take off and I set about wandering the neighborhood to create images for the guide to the area.

 

A Quick Neighborhood Guide

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More to come in a future update.

 

Withers & Marcy, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY

 

Subject: 3 Buildings in Williamsburg
Client: Patoma
Location: Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York
Project Date: June 18th-19th, 2021

The Brief

Real estate development team Patoma reached out to me about photographing three buildings in Williamsburg.

They were referred to me by long time friend and client Moiz Malik who is rebuilding their website and informed them of the need for high quality imagery of their most valuable projects, which will be critical in raising their next round of funding. It’s the proverbial ‘show your work’ situation. Patoma has been in business for years buying and renovating buildings, but this is their first foray into hiring a professional photographer to shoot them.

We started with discussing scope of work -

Three buildings in need of exterior photography:

44-50 Withers Street, which houses the very successful Llama Inn Restaurant. They recently added an outdoor structure and seating to the patio in front of the building, and our objective was to show off their excellent utilization of the corner property.

52-58 Marcy Avenue, which houses the daytime eatery Gertie. Gertie also has the recent addition of a sidewalk structure, again showing how the space’s usage can be maximized. The building itself has a sleek black corrugated steel facade we wanted to show off.

20-26 Marcy Avenue, which currently has no commercial tenants, but does feature a striking corrugated steel facade along with perforated steel coverings over part of the window to add privacy while allowing for a massive window view from within.

More on this project to come in a future update.

Cebu Bar & Bistro - Interiors

It's funny how one thing leads to another. I photographed the Mid-Century Residence for my cabinet client Imperia. Around the same time the homeowner was in the middle of planning to take photos of his restaurant. He saw my images and said "we need this guy." So we talked through everything that they needed and it was a full shoot of both the space and the menu. The partners have owned this restaurant for 16 years and it's their baby, and they'd never had professional pictures made of it. It was exciting to be entrusted with showing off the place they'd put so many years into. The shoot took place over three days:

1. Interiors
2. Food
3. Cocktails, Interior Details, and an exterior twilight. We added on some brunch dishes, too.

Here are the images produced from day one, along with some of the details and the exterior from day three.

Cebu Bar & Bistro, Architecture / Interiors
Client: Cebu Bar & Bistro
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
Project Date: May 8th, 2017

Mid-Century Residence

There are few things that make for a more exciting photo project than showing up on location to find that the place is already beautifully decorated and filled with sunlight. They had so much nice stuff here that I was really struggling with deciding what to remove to simplify the images. There we so many cool items and SO MANY PLANTS! Every house needs so many more plants. I need more plants. But these homeowners have it down. You should also also know that they found, I said FOUND, the  massive cacti in the living room and stairwell. There was so much more of this beautiful mid-century modern house that I wish we could have gotten to, but our shoot focused on the kitchen and took most of the day. But trust me, the rest of it is just as gorgeous.

Mid-Century Residence
Client: Imperia Cabinet, Purekitchen
Silver Lake, Staten Island, New York
Project Date: March 23rd, 2017

State Street Townhouse

This townhouse in Boerum Hill had a lot of nice character thanks to the homeowner's items. This was a project Imerpia Cabinet did a few years ago and we photographed as part of a project to catalog all of their work and modernise their website (still under construction at this time). 

State Street Townhouse
Client: Imperia Cabinet, Purekitchen
Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, New York
Project Date: June 22nd, 2017

West 90th Street Townhouse

Townhouse on the upper west side for Purekitchen / Imperia Cabinet. Construction had just finished and we went in quick to get the photos before it sold. Client wanted to keep it simple so we didn't do any staging, just saw the space raw. My favorite is the one point perspective (the first image below) because without the context it could be anywhere. You can imagine your whole dream house around it. The other angles show off the details of the kitchen.

Imperia also made the vanities in the bathrooms, the minibar, and the fireplace chimney surface you see in the background of the final image. I really love the bathtub here, it caught the light so peacefully. 

90th Street Townhouse
Client: Imperia Cabinet
Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York
Project Date: June 12th, 2017

Union Street Condos

This photo project was the day after the Brooklyn Condo, a 1-2 combo of Park Slope condo photography for Imperia. From this set came one of my favorite photos of the year. I use direct flash to create this very poppy, high fashion, high contrast look. It's very bright and has these great strong shadows and specular highlights that shout "mid-century perfection" to me. I also produced images with several different looks in this set, including some with softer light and some with the night-time look, so that the client can use them to market in different ways. There were several condos in the building and I photographed all of the kitchens and vanities. These are my favorites from the set.

Union Street Condos
Client: Cabinet Manufacturer Imperia Cabinet
Park Slope, Brooklyn
Project Date: May 17th, 2017

Brooklyn Condo

This is another favorite architecture shoot from this year. This place completely blew me away when I stepped inside. I couldn't believe how nice it was. I was here to photograph the kitchen and cabinetry for my client, but I couldn't help to explore the house and take a few extra images after I wrapped up in the kitchen. I'll save those photos from share with you another time. For now, the focus is on the work of Imperia Cabinet on this gorgeous kitchen I wish I could have myself. Sergei (of Imperia) and I really like moody, sexy lighting, so here's another spot where I experimented with making some moody night shots in the middle of the day (because we didn't have access in the evening). It required a lot of black cloth and creative editing, and I'm very happy with the results. I also put small lights inside the cabinets to show off their interior details with some sexy light. The objective is to capture the love a homeowner feels for the kitchen of their dreams.

Also: That corner cabinet swing out arm is fkn brilliant.

Brooklyn Condo
Client: Imperia Cabinet
Architect: Shuji Suzumori, Idan Naor
Builder: Madsen Consulting, Concord Consulting
Project Date: May 16th, 2017