I’m often asked what are my favorite projects to photograph and as a personality who’s much more engaged with the process than the final result, that’s sometime challenging to answer. But I know when it happens and there’s usually some sort of background or story.
This is the Tres Bella Salon in Boerne, Texas. The designer, Garrett Wiese, LEED GA and I were connected by a mutual contact in San Antonio in 2024, which led to this shoot exactly a year later. It’s rare that I ever work for a solo designer, let alone one was still in graduate school earning an M. Arch. What made this more charming is the end client and owner of Tres Bella is Pam, Garrett’s mother.
During the shoot, I strove to make intimate connections on both a macro and small scale. The choice in architectural lighting visually complimented the arched openings and natural ambient daylight from the roof.
Simple design is never as simple as it appears, young designers (and old ones too) often attempt to cram everything into one design. Within a limited footprint, Garrett chooses to make a couple gestures in shape, sticks to a few material transitions, embeds program and function without making it feel cramped, and let’s gentle washes of light handle the rest.
The neutral color palette allows any tertiary color – whether it’s the green wall, pops of green furniture, plants, or array of cosmetic products to pop in a calm, warm manner.
Private rooms are given their own individual personality with their own unique material palette that remains cohesive with spaces for general customers.
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This wallpaper was a great find! In the restroom, green becomes the main act.
Most people just consider separate rooms as isolated spaces, but designers see them as spaces that work in conjunction with surrounding spaces, similar to an organism. As photographer, you never want to make the audience feel trapped and that there’s something beyond the immediacy of this moment that’s adds to a sum. So in the shampoo space I’m stepping back to not just illustrate practical use of the space, but allowing the globe lights (and people) lead left to the arched opening into the invisible beyond.
However stepping behind the shampoo stations gives direct visual connection to the salon beyond.
I decided against shooting wide-angle to help keep general scenes like this below tight and intimate.
You don’t always have to add people in a traditional sense, here I used their reflection to assist framing the casework beyond without it being just the wood panels.
I have a fair amount of large or major commissions, but capturing work like this, at the start of what I’m sure will be a long and fruitful career, is part of why I’m an architectural photographer.
