This is one of my latest professional shoots for Olive Architecture (whose website I also designed). This was a personal learning experience of patience; dealing with the overcast winter weather of late, combined with limited sun availability caused a shoot that would’ve ordinarily taken a couple days in the summer to last two weeks. I was relying on sunny days to provide decent exterior shots and to provide optimum diffuse light for interior shots. As with everything, I scoped the hotel a couple times before shooting and concluded the best times would be during the afternoon hours during which the sun would be setting quickly towards the horizon.
To illustrate the difference between shooting architecture during the winter months, I happen to have photographed the Holiday Inn adjacent to the hotel I just finished documenting.
The above photo was taken on April 25, 2008 at 6:30 p.m. As you can tell, the front face is washed with good late afternoon daylight. During the winter, that entire face is cast in shadow all day long, which mirrors the same challenge I’d have with the Sheraton. However, the low afternoon sun would be perfect for evening reflections off the windows. (So you take the good with the bad!) I spent four separate occasions shooting various parts of the hotel – below is a sampling of the photography.
A couple of exterior views in the day and evening:
When we finally had a clear sunny day, it allowed a ton of diffuse light to pour into the front lobby and corridor of the hotel, providing more options than I’d have otherwise.
When first visiting hotel, I immediately knew I wanted shadowplay in the corridor adjacent to the meeting rooms. The low sun angle permitted sunlight to penetrate deep into the space. This is only one of two photographs I HDR’d…
…and the actual conference room is the second.
I used Photomatix software, which is a mixed bag. I don’t like Photoshop’s HDR and find the results too washed out. With Photomatix, I LOVED the immediate results it produced; pulling and aligning the bracketed images were simple. But as anyone dealing with the software knows, Photomatix has a dead pixel problem. You usually can’t see it at 100% (unless the photo is pretty bad), but zooming at 200% – 500% it becomes clear. With the two above photographs, I figured the time to clean up the dead pixels was going to be more time efficient than attempting my typical development process for the result I’d be getting.
The exercise room.
A typical elevator lobby. The photography featuring local sites and landmarks integrated throughout the hotel is truly stellar; they were done by Jesse Kalishe who is headquartered locally in Carolina.
Below are the two bedroom options at the hotel.
And one last evening shot with sunset reflecting off the front facade.
Catch ya next time around!