We recently wrapped shooting for 9 Degrees North, a 9 bedroom, 9 bathroom oceanfront pad in Hermosa Palms right in front of one of the most sought after surf spots in the area, corners.
The client was looking for more polished images that they could use to promote the property as a vacation rental on booking sites. They also felt professional property photography would be valuable in selling the place as they recently put the property on the market.
This was a huge home to shoot, and full of lighting challenges that tested our skills, but we enjoyed every moment of it. Shooting in perfect lighting conditions is obviously a treat, but anytime we’re challenged it becomes an opportunity to evolve our skills, which is crucial.
It’s such a joy shooting when things are perfect, but if you can’t perform in challenging situations, you’ll never get to a level where large clients can trust you and know that you can deliver regardless of what happens with lighting, weather, etc.
The tricky part of shooting 9 Degrees North was that the interiors on the original 2 levels of the home are quite dark and the surrounding views are really bright which creates a lot of light leakage around windows and makes it challenging to get nicely exposed interiors and also keep the views.
They also did renovations creating a modern new addition on the third level built with huge spacious windows that let in loads of light. This is ideal for lighting up the interior space, but can be tricky not to blow out the views.
For the images where the views were important we used a technique to blend in the correct outside exposure to bring back the views.
For the other wides we used 5 exposure HDR with flash fill and lots of editing, re-touching and brushes to perfect them.
For the detail shots we used a flash with a big soft-box to light localized spaces for a stronger out of camera look and less post-processing.
For the exteriors we used a combination of long exposure and HDR to get the most visually impactful images that did the home justice.
Finally we shot a variety of drone images that provided perspective on the both the proximity to the ocean and also the community pool and bar.
All in all, a fun project for a client we absolutely adore in a local community we have grown to love. It was a special project for us, and it was really important to us that we knocked it out of the park.
We we’re thrilled to hear how much the client loved the images, and truly hope the visuals we created will create an abundance of rental opportunities in the near future.
