Office Furnishings by John A Marshall Company

John A. Marshall Company is an office furnishings dealer and service company. My task for this project was to capture some of the unique furnishings for their client's space. Working with Stephen Marshall our goal was to arrive in the morning and spend 3-4 hours taking pictures of our main areas of interest without causing too much distraction. It was a live office. The pictures convey an empty space but I can assure you we spent much of our time staging the scenes and maintaining a minimal presence.

Historic Architecture - The Nelson-Piper Building's Transformation

I was called to get some shots of the historic Nelkon-Piper building for EDCKC's blog. The building is 134 years old as of writing this. Immediately I knew a front twilight shot was in order so I could capture the character of the exterior. I requested that the interior lights stay on until about 5:30pm. The sun set around 5pm the evening I shot it. The benefits of shooting twilights in the winter are you get to shoot and be done before 5:30 instead of 8:30 or 9:00 in the Summer. There's one positive for Winter...

The next day I got to spend a couple hours capturing some of the interior views of the office space doing my best to dodge people and not be a giant distraction. There was no lighting setup here.  That way I could remain stealthy and sneak around getting shots without blasting light into people's spaces.

Abandoned Photography - Westport Middle School

To date this has been the most interesting and fun shoots I've tackled. Westport Middle School sold to developers to reuse the school as a piece of an entrepreneur/tech mixed use campus. The campus will feature a coding school, live-work spaces for artists and entrepreneurs, a health center, and a bevy of other amenities to suite the needs of tech culture. Sounds like a great place for a freelance photographer to work at...

I showed up an hour before an event which included about 200 people. My goal was to race around the building capturing what I could before the crowd poured in. Carrying a tripod around the exterior and up and down 4 flights of stairs made for a creative workout! The space was raw so the idea was to capture that feeling and to document some of the space before the transformation.

It's fun to visualize what will become of this beautiful old space. I found one of the most interesting features of this old school is that the cafeteria is at the top of the building on the fourth floor. I would love to know why this was considering the supplies needed to be transported up to the top of the building. 

Entrance with beautiful arch.

The auditorium is on the first floor. Nostalgic!

Interesting floor decay in the gym.

Check out the murals.

Arrows to direct traffic.

Here is the cafeteria at the fourth floor.

I loved these windows. 

Lovely exterior details.

Modern Design Meets Law Office

Last month I spent a morning with Kelly Lankford (KHL Design Studio) shooting an updated law office. The overall design throughout the office reflects Koprince Law's unique modern feeling brand. The light and bright feel with the cool toned accents makes for a welcoming lobby and offices.

The challenge in shooting the space came down to controlling the colors within the office lighting. Mixed lighting with no natural light is always a challenge. It involves taking exposures with lights off, lights on, and then blending the colors with software after the shoot. A secondary challenge in shooting this small space was to not shoot too wide. With any ultra-wide shot the image gets distorted at the edges making unpleasing and unrealistic compositions. For design it is always important to have believable photos. With a little re-arranging within the frame and some creativity it was possible to get shots without distortion.

Thank you Kelly for your beautiful design and insight on the shoot!

Caught in the act!