Commercial Photography

TownePlace Suites Marriott St. Petersburg Clearwater commercial hotel shoot

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TownePlace Suites by Marriott St. Petersburg Clearwater outdoor pool - Nikon D300 with Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR mounted on Induro CT214 tripod with Nikon MC-30 cable release

Continuing my partnership with area Marriott hotels (see Historic Courtyard), last week I photographed the exterior & interior of TownePlace Suites St. Petersburg Clearwater.  This hotel is designed for long term stays with the rooms featuring kitchens and additional living and work spaces within the suites.  To my surprise, this hotel is also pet friendly, so your dog or cat can stay with you!

Lobby area features of TownePlace Suites - snacks & front desk are HDR; gym is single exposureI really liked the "In a Pinch" snack shelves for some reason, maybe because of the clever name or the fact that you can just grab a back of chips right from the lobby.  It was the hotel management's decision to photograph the front desk with no people.  The photograph mine will replace did include people.  What do you think, should a hotel lobby/front desk shot include people in it or not?

Features of suite rooms at TownePlace - kitchen, bedroom, living room are HDR; bathroom is single exposure with speedlight in the tub!Photographing rooms is very hard.  You might think making a sunset portrait on the beach is harder, but to me, photographing a hotel room is because the lighting is more of a challenge indoors.  I use a combination of HDR and off camera flash techniques to produce the best results given the rooms windows and ambient light.

Commercial Photograph License by Silver Vine website - green leaves

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"Last Green Leaves of Autumn" licensed by Silver Vine graphic design & featured on the home page

Andrew, a graphic designer from Australia, contacted me about using my "Last Green Leaves of Autumn" photograph on his business website (view here).  This image has already been published in the largest English language magazine in Japan, Metropolis, as its photo of the week in October 2008 (see bottom of page).  I was more than happy to license the image to Andrew who I think put it to very good use on the home page of his business website.  

Andrew's request spurred me on to formally offer a single location for browsing and getting information about licensing my photographs.  All this information is now located on a single page:

LICENSE PHOTOGRAPHS FOR BUSINESS & PUBLICATION USE

I hope to be able to provide images to more great clients like Andrew sharing my photographs of Florida, Japan and more.

Tokyo Japan Skyscrapers - Roppongi Hills Tokyo Midtown Tokyo Tower

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Tokyo Tower (center) Tokyo Midtown skyscraper (right) - Nikon D300 with Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 1/50th single exposure (not HDR)

Yesterday I was going through my photography archives searching for a shot (daytime beach) that might be usable for a potential client when I came across these shots of the Tokyo skyline.  They were made from the balcony of a Russian photographer friend who had an amazing condo in central Tokyo.  All these shots are the views he gets to enjoy everyday!  If I recall, his condo was on about the 22nd floor.  The time was around 4:30pm in February of 2009, when the sun sets not so long after 5pm, which is why it already looks like dusk on this overcast day.  None of these shots are HDR, which was just starting to get popular again around 2009.  It is possible to get vivid detail and color without HDR if shooting during the best light of day.

Tokyo Tower (left) Tokyo Midtown skyscraper (2nd from left) Roppongi Hills skyscraper (center-right) - Nikon D300 f/11 ISO 400 1/250th single exposure (not HDR)Just as my photography career was starting to take off in Japan, I was set to move back to Florida.  This was the last time I visited with my Russian photographer friend.  

Tokyo Midtown is the middle skyscraper in the above shot and at the time was the newest mega-office-entertainment-shopping building.  The shops on the lower floors were great, if you had at least $500 for the cheapest item seemingly.  Roppongi Hills is the right-most skyscraper, and was the previous title holder of newest mega-office-entertainment-shopping building.  Roppongi Hills remained the far more interesting architecturally, and is home to the best movie theater I have ever been to.  

Roppongi Hills in detail from up high - Nikon D300 with Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D lens @ f/11 ISO 400 1/160th single exposure (not HDR)I am glad to have these photographs to remind me of my last visit with a friend I am probably never going to see again.  I still follow his work on flickr (Vladimir Zakharov) as he never ceases to find new roof top views to photograph.

St. Petersburg Florida Commercial Hotel Photography Courtyard Marriott

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St. Petersburg Commercial Hotel Photography - the Courtyard Marriott at dusk in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida - 7-bracket HDRMy commercial photography work for the Courtyard Marriott in downtown St. Petersburg continues with an exterior and interior shoot of the hotel itself (see commercial wedding shoot).  This job spanned mutliple days because day and evening exterior shots were desired by the client.  The HDR sunset shot of the hotel exterior at dusk was the very last shot to make.

St. Petersburg Commercial Hotel Photography - Courtyard Marriott historical lobby - 7-bracket HDRFormerly the Pennsylvania Hotel, the now Courtyard Marriott has a nearly 100-year old history.  The lobby retains the most of the original features of the hotel including the crown molding and tile flooring along with the marble wall accents. 

St. Petersburg Commercial Hotel Photography - Courtyard Marriott suite room - 7-bracket HDRNo matter how wide of a lens you have, photographing rooms, in particular hotel rooms, is still challenging as it is ideal to show as many features of the room in a single shot.  The challenge lies in the fact that not all these room features tend to line up in a neat row.  You can of course stitch multiple shots together, but then that would not look natural.  For a viewer to know this is a suite room, the bedroom and separate living space needed to be shown in the same shot.  

St. Petersburg Commercial Hotel Photography- indoor pool at Courtyard Marriott - 7-bracket HDRHere is a tip for pool photography, never show the whole pool in the shot in order to strategically leave the entire size of the pool to the viewer's imagination.  This is of course unless a hotel has an olympic size swimming pool they want to show off!

St. Petersburg Commercial Hotel Photography - office workspace at Courtyard Marriott - 7-bracket HDRAs you can see with all the above interior shots, I shot into a corner of the room which gives an image depth and dimension.  Very rarely is it best to shoot straight at a flat wall.  Shooting into a corner often naturally shows the most of an interior space anyway.  

New Salvador Dali Museum St. Petersburg Florida

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The new Salvador Dali Museum of St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 with Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 @ f/11 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR with partial blend of a single image on Induro CT214 tripod with cable releaseThe appearance of any new piece of architecture within a photographer's city is an opportunity to create a defining shot of it.  I am far from the first local photographer to make photos of the new Salvador Dali Museum here in St. Petersburg, Florida, and even farther from producing the defining shot.  Moris Moreno has already made those shots (view here).  When I did a search to see what photos of the museum already existed, finding and viewing Moreno's shots were humbling.  

I finally photographed the new Dali Museum mostly because a commercial client wanted a shot of it to use for cross promotional purposes.  They required only a single shot which is the above.  I then went back on another occasion to use the museum grounds as the site of a DSLR Photography Lesson and made a few more shots during that time.

The above shot represents the culmination of all my HDR shooting skills, plus my increasing use of masking.  I will describe this editing technique in detail in an upcoming post.  It also helps now that I am using a professional level tripod, an Induro CT214 with Induro BDH2 ballhead.  Again, a review of those sticks will be coming soon.

The glass waterfall of the new St. Petersburg Salvador Dali Museum - Nikon D300 with Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens @ f/11 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR with partial blend of a singe image on Induro CT214 tripod with cable releaseThe main architectural flair of the museum exterior is a so-called waterfall of glass flowing narrowly from the east facing roof of the building to a wider flow along ground level wrapping around the north side.  Using an HDR technique to photograph the triangular glass panels up close allows for being able to see inside the glass while keeping the sky correctly exposed.

The Mahaffey Theater (right) has a new neighbor in the Salvador Dali Museum - Nikon D300 with Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 @ f/11 ISO 200 1/250th 3-shot panorama on Induro CT214 tripod with cable releaseI always liked the Mahaffey Theater's glass architecture feature, and now it is complemented with the glass waterfall of the Dali Museum.  The buildings are not exactly in a popular area of downtown St. Petersburg, more on the outskirts of it.  The only times I passed this area in the past were on exploratory cycling trips.  The roads are wide, smooth and empty in this area, great for cycling.

Melting Time bench at new Salvador Dali Museum St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 with Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens @ f/11 ISO 200 1/400th single frame handheldThe grounds of the museum before the glass waterfall contain a well landscaped garden inlcuding a melting time bench reminding one that they are still in the world of Dali.  It is details like that, an extra expense no doubt, that add a lot to the visiting experience.  I did not sit on the bench myself, for time already moves in strange ways for me.  I did not want to risk any further altered perceptions.

Handwritten note adorning a tree at the new Dali Museum in St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 with Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens @ f/2.8 ISO 200 1/8000th single frame handheldAnother great feature of the Dali garden was a tree adorned with long green streamers to which people afixed handwritten notes with clothespins.  Some just tied their entrance wristbands to the streamers.  Whoever thought of this came up with a really great idea to give a visitor a sense of what other people experienced and felt on their visits.  No matter how good digital communication gets, the power of the handwritten note/letter/document just cannot be denied.  Penmanship is just as much a representation of a person's character as anything else.  When I formally go to the museum as a visitor, I will take the time to add my own handwritten remembrence.

Commercial Wedding Shoot with Models at Courtyard Marriott St. Petersburg Florida

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Commercial Wedding Photography on historic tile floor at Courtyard Marriott -- SETUP: f/5.6 1/80th ISO 400 STROBIST: SB-800 @ 1/2 power with shoot-through umbrella on light stand 9' high behind model & SB-600 @ 1/4 power with diffuser cap to frame right held by assistantThis was my most complex indoor shoot to date involving two models, two makeup artists, a dress designer, a florist, a caterer, a hotel sales manger and one photographer's assistant.  I am very happy to say it turned out to be perhaps my best indoor photography work to date.  It is very satisfying when a big team effort results in such final images.  

I had worked with the bride model, Nancy, before on a commercial fashion shoot in Safety Harbor.  The sales manager, Ryan, of the Courtyard Marriott, who hired me to makes these images, I had met in weeks past at a networking event then in subsequent meetings discussing various photography projects.  My photographer's assistant was Natasha, a former DSLR Photography Lesson student.  When you can have that many people you already know on a photo job, it makes it much more comfortable.

The above shot of Nancy sitting on the historic tile floor of the hotel was my idea, which I came up with on a survey of the hotel a few weeks before the shoot itself.  I am standing on a marble staircase (pictured below) offering the perfect logistics to make this kind of shot.  I wanted to go with a muted light setup producing a bit of a natural vignette to the image as I chose to most prominently light the model in the center.

 St. Petersburg Commercial Wedding Photography - Models Brad & Nancy framed by arching historic doorways - SETUP: f/4 ISO 200 1/60th STROBIST: SB-800 @ 1/4 power with reflective umbrella on light stand to frame left & SB-600 @ 1/4 power with diffuser cap to frame right held by assistantThis archway shot was another I had previsioned during a location scout of the hotel.  I really like repeating patterns and these archways caught my eye right away.  There were actually three arches, but the first one could not be worked into the shot.  This photograph turned out just as I had imagined.  

St. Petersburg Commercial Wedding Photography - Nancy reflected in the swimming pool - SETUP: f/5.6 ISO 200 1/100th STROBIST: SB-800 @ 1/2 power with shoot-through umbrella on light stand to frame left & SB-600 @ 1/2 power with diffuser cap to frame right held by assistantThe bride reflected in the pool was another pre-planned shot.  As you might be able to tell, being able to scout a location some time before the scheduled shoot is advantageous as one then can move from location to location and concentrate more on executing the shot at best as possible rather than where will the next shot even be.  Again, I am pleased with how the shot turned out because due to the width of the pool I could not get my speedlights that close to Nancy, but as it turned out there was no lack of light for the shot.

St. Petersburg Commercial Wedding Photography - Models Brad & Nancy on the historic marble staircase - SETUP: f/4 ISO 400 1/100th STROBIST: SB-800 @ 1/2 power with shoot-through umbrella on light stand 9' high behind me & SB-600 @ 1/4 power with diffuser cap to frame right held by assistantThe original marble staircase was something the hotel sales manager definitely wanted to showcase in one of the shots.  I previsioned perhaps the bride walking down the staircase or maybe the bride on the bottom of the staircase being helped down by the groom, but thanks to the models' creativity with their posing, I liked this shot the best of the staircase series.  I cannot say how much it helps a photographer to work with great models!  It makes my job so much easier.

St. Petersburg Commercial Wedding Photography - Models Brad & Nancy facing the original hotel elevator - SETUP: f/5.6 ISO 400 1/80th STROBIST: SB-800 @ 1/2 power with shoot-through umbrella on light stand 9' high behind models & SB-600 @ 1/4 power with diffuser cap to frame right held by assistant

To feature the hotel's original elevator I chose to once again use the nearby marble staircase as a vantage point.  Shooting straight on to the elevator produced a flat shot.  I felt shooting from above like this created a dynamic image showing the bride & groom's anticipation, while at the same time including the elevator in the shot, as well as the original tile floor.  I chose also to again keep the lighting soft & muted, to help create that classic look.

St. Petersburg Commercial Wedding Photography - carrying the bride over the threshold - SETUP: f/5.6 ISO 400 1/80th STROBIST: SB-800 @ 1/4 power with shoot-through umbrella on light stand to frame left & SB-600 @ 1/8th power with diffuser cap pointed at back hallway wall handheld by assistant

There was no trouble to light up the models from the front (within the room), but this meant the hallway looked very dark.  The solution was to place one speedlight on the left of the door frame pointing toward the opposite wall.  Not only did this fill the hallway with light, it provided a strong backlight to the shot.  

St. Petersburg Commercial Wedding Photography - models using their own creativity - SETUP: f/4 ISO 400 1/100th STROBIST: SB-800 @ 1/2 power with shoot-through umbrella on light stand @ 1/4 power in bedroom to the right & SB-600 @ 1/16th power with diffuser cap to frame left directly on the floor pointing straight up Both Nancy and I had the same idea for a through the doorway bedroom scene shot.  However, her and Brad came up with the pose and prop setup (shoe placement, jacket coming half off) on their own, which I would say made the shot nearly entirely if not for the tremendous challenge I had trying to light everything.  It was by far the hardest shot to light for me ever.  Getting rid of shadows behind Brad was the main challenge.  Putting the second speedlight on the floor behind him solved it, after lots of trial and error.  Ultimately I did have to clone out one shadow along the right side of the bed from umbrella edge spill.  This was also the last shot of the day (3.5 hours of straight shooting!) so it was great to end on one so challenging.

I appreciate the work of everyone at the hotel that day helping make the images in this photo story.

Models: 

More information about commercial & wedding photography:

Best Sunset Beach Wedding Photography St. Petersburg Clearwater Florida

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Jason now serves the SW Florida area with the best beach wedding photography!

 

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