When Weather Won’t Cooperate.

Through rain, clouds, wind, and more rain, professionals stick it out and get it done. This shot for Ply Gem in Virginia happened to be photographed on a rainy day. We managed to sneak in a few angles between the showers, but there was quite a lot to do on the retouching end because of that. In order to make this image look like it was shot on a bright and sunny day, a sky had to be dropped in (obviously). That was a bit of a challenge because of all the leaves overlapping the sky. The color temperature needed to be shifted, the windows had to be colorized, the grass had to be replaced, a new driveway was dropped in, the tree on the left had to be lightened up considerably, and handles on the garage doors were comped in as well. There was a total of about 6-7 hours of retouching in this one shot alone. There are times when mother nature just doesn’t let you get what you want in camera. 

Credits:

Photographer: Alistair Tutton

Assistant: Adam Caselman

Retoucher: Adam Caselman

Author: Adam Caselman

Client: Ply Gem

Client: Blacktop Creative

Legos and Fish…What Could Be Better?

Another wonderful new addition to Kansas City is this project - a collaboration between ZGF Architects and our long-standing, and wonderful, client, Burns & McDonnell. It’s a beautiful insertion, into a much loved civic space at Crown Center, and Kansas City’s response has been incredible. Thousands of people have been visiting the Lego Land and Sea Life exhibits and it’s a great addition to our offerings to visitors.

Credits:

Photographer: Alistair Tutton

Assistant: Adam Caselman

Retoucher: Adam Caselman

Client: ZGF Architects

Client: Burns and McDonnell

Location: Crown Center

Location: Sea Life Aquarium 

Location: Legoland Kansas City

More Before and After Gems. 

This was a job we did for our friends out in Omaha, Nebraska. DLR Group designed the building and runs their firm in the top two floors. It’s an awesome looking building, and they’re awesome people.

The first image of the building square on was taken very early in the morning, and let me just say that the mosquitoes from Omaha must have found a bottle of anabolic steroids somewhere. It was my job to attract the bugs away from Alistair while he took the shots. I did alright, although one or two might have gotten by me. On the retouching end, I replaced the grass with some grass images we keep in stock just for such an occasion. The building was squared up, the cars were cloned out as well as a light pole right in front of the building, the tone was adjusted as well as a boost of saturation.

The second image had a lot of work to be done. The cars and the light pole right outside the window needed to be cloned out. The light pole took a little time because it crossed over a couple of buildings. The two vents in the floor had to come out. One of them went right under the chair which was fun to clone out. I adjusted the tone in the image as well.

The last shot was a doozy. Again, it was an early morning shot. The bugs were out and biting. Adam Wells from DLR had put out construction cones in the parking spaces the night before so cars wouldn’t be able to park on the street and obscure the view of the building. It worked well, but I think some people were slightly irritated by it. If only they could see the shot and realize the sacrifice they made to produce such an image. The cars in the before image were there when the cones were put out.  All of those cars had to be cloned out, all of the construction cones had to come out, three light poles were cloned out, and the grass was replaced.

This was a very cool project. Good looking building inside and out. 

Credits:

Photographer: Alistair Tutton

Author: Adam Caselman

Retouching: Adam Caselman

Assistant: Adam Caselman

Client: DLR Group

A Little Photoshop Makeover

Our retoucher, Adam Caselman shares a unique perspective on post production.

Here was a situation where the conditions for making a beauty shot were a little less than awesome, so I gave it a healthy dose of Photoshop. This is a shot from a project we did in Washington DC for Ply Gem. There was quite a bit to do on this photo, and I remember sitting in my chair looking at this thinking, ‘Where do I start?’ I think the best approach is to just pick the most obvious thing, make it look fantastic, then move on to the next thing. Just about everything in the image has been worked on in some way, so put on your gloves kids, we’re about to get messy.

The most obvious things to me were the basketball pole, the 'Case’ pole just to the left of that, the zig zag gutter in the middle of the frame, and the mailbox on the left. Everything must go! While these tasks weren’t like flipping on a kitchen light, I luckily had enough material around the objects. The challenging part of taking these objects out was cloning the siding of the house and keeping the pattern believable. The mailbox and the 'Case’ pole weren’t hard to deal with, but the basketball goal and the gutter were tricky.

Now that the cloning was done, I felt like I could take on the house. The large tree on the left was shading the left side of the house, so I had to lighten the left side and even out the tone. The tone gradually changed from right to left on the house, so I had to do my best to match that, lots of feathering. Then the color of the shutters had to be bumped up. Easy enough.

Next came the grass, which I had to bring in from a shot we had on hand that we use for cloning in grass. Grass can be very tricky to match. Special attention needs to be given to the time of day when putting completely new grass into a scene. Even the contrast of the grass needs to be correct for the time of day, or it won’t be convincing. The driveway needed replacing, and in an amazing coincidence Alistair came back the day I needed a new shot for it with a nice clean shot of a driveway, almost like it was meant to be.

The last piece was more challenging than I originally thought, the sky. I was able to replace the sky without too much painting. I used a series of contrast and color selections. Those techniques saved me what might have been hours in painting. Phew! I’m really pleased with how the image turned out, especially the cloning. I’ll admit to smiling when I flick through the before and after shots. I hope the client did too.

Credits:

Photographer: Alistair Tutton

Assistant: Adam Caselman

Retoucher: Adam Caselman

Author: Adam Caselman

Client: Ply Gem

Client: Blacktop Creative

Everyone's Poop Stinks...

…even mine! I learnt a few different things in school; primary amongst them were:

1) How to tie a real bow tie - yep, I actually learnt this during a math lesson - the teacher brought in a whole bunch of bow ties and taught us how to tie them. You may be wondering how this could ever be useful - well…if you’re a little tipsy at a black-tie event there’s no better chat-up line than actually knowing how to tie up a bow tie.

2) The other lesson I learnt was that only your friends would tell you when you “stank”; your real friends, the useful ones. And this was a really useful life lesson.

I’ve long been told and believe very strongly that the best way to find success and to accomplish great things very quickly is to find mentors…ones that will tell you that your poop stinks AND how to freshen it up a little, or even make fresh, better poop, that isn’t poop at all. This proved invaluable as I made the shift from architectural designer to photographer, a career move that has been unbelievably enriching and challenging.

In architecture the first mentors I found were those seasoned industry veterans who could tell me the pitfalls and the trampolines and most importantly how to think completely differently - learning how to think is very useful. As I moved into photography I found many mentors in the ranks of local and national photographers who were willing to give me incredible advice on how to look. Learning how to look is pretty much essential in this line of work. They also told me how the industry worked and taught me how even though I was a small part of the industry it was essential that I protect that industry and play a roll in improving it. So who are my latest mentors? Luckily my mentors now include the people that work with me at the studio. Last week I had a really challenging conversation with my studio manager, Kate, who’s kinda awesome. We made an overview of all the work I’ve done and then chatted about the industry, clients and both the strengths and weaknesses of my work in it. It was one of those tricky conversations where it’s really important to be objective and have an opinion and it was a lot of fun and really bloody productive. You will definitely be seeing the product of this conversation very soon.

So, I would definitely recommend finding yourself a mentor and making sure you keep them very handy as you make decisions and develop your portfolio, your business, your brand and you.

Cabin in the Woods…not that cabin.

We photograph a lot of very unique buildings - but this one was a little different; a stunning lakeside log cabin. We originally photographed the exterior for Ply Gem’s marketing materials and had a really fun time - we were then approached by the contractor and a magazine to photograph the full interior and off we went again. This time we worked with the fabulous Glenda Bailey and the home owner on some beautiful styling and created some really lovely images - a huge thanks to the home owner (you know who you are!) for making all of this happen.

Credits: PlyGem, Glenda Bailey - Stylist, Adam Caselman - Assistant

Amazing School Architecture

A year or two ago I had the privilege of travelling to Hutchinson, KS to photograph the vocational school there for DLR Group - it was a lovely shoot and definitely one for the books. So last fall we got to go back to Hutchinson, visit the Cosmosphere and photograph some beautiful architecture - I love the tree-like trusses in the lobby.

Credits: DLR Group, Adam Caselman - Assistant

Ohhhh..maha Office. Beauty in Design.

DLR Group just got a beeeeeaaaaautiful new office space in Omaha, designed and owned by them. It’s pretty darn gorgeous. Last fall, we made the trip up there, while the whole of I-29 was submerged, and got the chance to photograph it for posterity. The interiors and exteriors are lovely, but I have to admit the roof angle was my favorite - glad someone had a hold of the back of my pants!

Credits: DLR Group, Adam Caselman - Assistant

When Showing the Portfolio.

The oddest things can happen - I’m always certain to meet incredible people and see some of the most beautiful, creative offices around the country. But without a doubt my favorite was this year when visiting Campbell Mithun. Yep, this is a photo of me in a soundbooth, doing a voiceover for the agencies entries into “The One” show. I have to admit that while my silly accent has proven very entertaining over the years I’ve spent in America, this was the first time I actually had someone choose to record it for posterity - thanks go to Kat Dalager for a very entertaining time.

Credits:
Kat Dalager, Campbell Mithun

The Big Adventure.

Finally home from a really fun job - definitely a huge dash around the Mid-West. AWG came to us with two aims - firstly to capture the last twelve months of construction and new design in their supermarkets for their annual report and secondly so they could enter a design competition in Progressive Grocer. The big part of the challenge was that from the phone call to the final delivery for their competition we had three weeks. Three weeks to drive over 2,000 miles and then fly to Odessa to get that one outlying store that needed a plane flight

A lot of the blog posts I read chat about the wonderful imagery, or the equipment, or the craft services - lunch, yum - but the big part of this shoot wasn’t Adam and I running around in the field, working twelve hours a day, shooting, driving, retouching, repeat, but rather the front-end organization that enabled us to get out there and deliver the wonderful imagery, on-time and within budget.
Of course all that production is handled by Kate, our Studio Manager (also referred to as the Stupid Manager - she manages the stupid, i.e. me). One thing about Kate is that she is pretty wonderful; she works her arse off on the front end to ensure we all prepared when we go in the field, that our travel prep is all in place, the locations are all ready for us and job packet has all our info in it ready to go. This one was pretty insane, a different location almost every day, hundreds of miles apart and it was flawless, and quite often fun.

P.S. The Tampax shot was a special request from Kate - she wanted to see what we could do with it - she’s very silly.

Credits: Associated Wholesale Grocers, Adam Caselman - Photographer

winner of the 2012 pdn photography award

Ever since I started my journey into photography I’ve been an avid reader of PDN. For me it’s the primary source of news and advice for almost all aspects of the commercial photography industry - ranging from advertising photography, to photojournalism, to fine art and wedding photography and pretty much every thing in between. It’s read by a lot of photographers and a lot of art buyers. The magazine runs a few specialized competitions - chief amongst them the “Photo Annual”, their annual photography competition. It’s a pretty big deal, from what I know.

So we did the usual thing of entering a couple of pieces (I think we entered last year as well) and you know what’s really weird and unexpected and quite wonderful? We actually won - we’re amongst the winners! We’re actually going to be published in PDN. That’s right, the magazine I love is going to actually feature a photo of mine. Yep, it’s in the June issue, out any day now (the on-line version is out and apparently it’s page 77 if you want to take a look). And having had a brief look through the on-line work the other images are absolutely breathtaking; and it’s an absolute honour (British spelling of course - we’ll talk about aluminium next) to be amongst folk like that.

I’m kinda shocked, I have been for a couple of months since we heard. We’ve been holding off on chatting about it until we saw it on the on-line version. And we got an email the other day saying we can feature the fancy graphic below and I get to go to a party in Manhattan - the fancy one - to meet the other winners - this is kinda cool.

Needless to say I’m “chuffed to bits” and pretty humbled to get this sort of recognition. I know that Kansas City’s had a lot of attention from PDN over the years - David Morris was featured for his really cool blackboard image this year. Austin Walsh had that wonderful Christmas video in there last year and, most ironically, The Wade Brothers are on the facing page to me this year - congrats lads. I’m sure they are others as well but this, for me, is pretty darn amazing!

So what did we win for? It was a really cool project that we worked on with Blacktop Creative and Ply Gem. We’ve done several projects for them over the years documenting their exterior home products. For this project they teamed with Extreme Home Makeover and donated all the exterior finish products for all seven of the homes they built in seven days for their Joplin Christmas Special. It was an incredible donation by them and a pretty emotional project to work on. The homes were incredibly unique and we were charged with capturing overalls and individual details of each home. Over the course of several days we worked on all the different aspects that Ply Gem had delivered. We had, honestly, some bloody awful weather. That meant we were on location for long periods, up well before the dawn, trying to get that perfect moment and we definitely found some gorgeous images of the homes. One angle we settled on immediately was a front elevation shot with a really dominent portion of sky in each image to make a set where the unique designs would hang together as a set. For this series we had a really short gap of good weather, and we literally ran down the street to get each image in as nearly identical lighting as we could get.

Thanks to everyone for all their hard work on the project - it was a really fun set to be on and the co-operation with the film crew was wonderful. The final result had some real meaning for a wonderful group of families.

Credits: Ply Gem, Blacktop Creative, Dave Swearingen - Creative Director, Adam Caselman - Assistant

On the road…Again and Loving It!

So, I’m on the road a lot…a lot in my opinion, I know there’s folk out there that travel more, but it feels like a lot! And I’ve grown to really enjoy it, luckily, last year we did about 30 out of town shoots, and ended up with a little over 100 days on the road and saw so many fabulous places and met some cool people. This set of shoots are part of AWG’s annual report - capturing a whole series of retail interiors for them - it’s a lot of early mornings, over a dozen locations, a thousand miles of travel and a lot of spinning of cans to make them look perfect. The results are great and we’ll share a couple of the finals with you when we get to the end in another week.

But for now we’ve been set the challenge, by Kate, to capture a unique snapshot with a special product at each location - it’s definitely made it interesting, hunting out the unusual products. Today we were in Bryant, AR at a Food Giant, and they are “The Meat People”. And yes they are - here’s a snapshot Adam caught of me slobbering over the 1 1/2” thick t-bone’s and porterhouses that were bigger than my head.

Yum!

Credits: Associated Wholesale Grocers, Adam Caselman - Photographer

Our work….in print. Always cool.

Tearsheets are pretty darn fabulous and we had some odd ones last year - ranging from priests, to hangover cures, professional football (soccer for you American folk) and the architects and union workers who build the stadiums and even a clock maker who restores historic clocks - the really big ones. I love the variety of the projects we get to cover, and while I do have my favorites it’s phenomenal fun to be working with so many wonderful subjects. 

Credits:
Room 39
Sporting KC
Populous
Architect Magazine
Historic Preservation Magazine
Columbia Magazine
Assistant - Adam Caselman

Top Secret in Florida

Sometimes we do work that we can’t talk about - this is one of them. It was a lot of fun and sunny and there were palm trees. 

Credits:
Burns and McDonnell
Assistant - Adam Caselman

All of the Lights…

It’s really good fun shooting architecture and sometimes we find that the simple things get really complicated to get a quick shot. This week we’re out in Atlanta, shooting for Houlihan’s at their Chequers location, focusing on the private dining rooms.

One of the details we love to capture are these simple “down-the-line” shots featuring the table setting and capturing the room ambience…for this one we ended up with nine lights and got a really nice shot.

Credits:
Chequers
Assistant - Adam Caselman

SAN FRANCISCO: BEAUTIFUL SCENERY AND BEAUTIFUL OFFICES.

We’ve been working with BRR Architecture for several years now and it’s been wonderful watching them grow and some of my favorite shoots for them have been the satellite offices. Most recently, we got to visit San Francisco and photograph their incredible new downtown offices. I loved the interior with its beautiful open feel, and those old-school plan chests in the conference room are gorgeous.

Credits:
BRR Architecture
Assistant - Adam Caselman

LOVE SHOOTING KANSAS CITY’S MOST BEAUTIFUL HOMES.

So when it comes to summer I can think of few places I’d rather be than here. Another great chance to work with the wonderful Andrea Darr from KCH&G and photograph an absolutely stunning home.

Credits:
Kansas City Home and Gardens

WE LOVE RESTAURANT SHOOTS. IT MAKES LUNCH TASTIER.

We’ve had a great history of working with Houlihan’s and while I love photographing their food I also really enjoy photographing their interior architecture. Recently they opened a new J Gilbert’s concept restaurant in St Louis and it is simply breathtaking. As always we loved working with Dean and were delighted with the results - lots of careful lighting and staging, but it’s a beautiful restaurant.

PS The food is pretty delicious too.

Credits:

Photographer: Alistair Tutton

Assistant: Adam Caselman

Client: Houlihan's 

Location: J. Gilberts

Beautiful Interior Design.

If you’re going to be the owner of a leading interior design studio then you really should have a wonderful home - and this one is no exception. Full of gorgeous details and stunning vignettes one of my favorites was the skulls and antlers over the bed.







Credits:
Kansas City Homes & Gardens

Extreme Home Makeover - Joplin Style.

Sometimes you get to photograph a subject that truly moves you - and in this case it was seeing Joplin and getting to witness part of the rebuilding effort. Ply Gem is a long-term client of mine who I have helped build a library of case studies featuring their windows, siding, fencing and a myriad of other products.

For the Joplin Extreme Home Makeover they donated all the windows and siding for all seven houses and the result was a stunning set of case studies for them, but more importantly seven wonderful homes for some very deserving families. Joplin has had a really rough run of it, but they are definitely heading in the right direction.

PS Best place to donate is the Red Cross and select Joplin as the destination for your donation - they’re doing some wonderful work there, but there is an incredible amount of rebuilding left to go.








Credits:
Ply Gem
Blacktop Creative
Art Director: Dave Swearingen
Assistant: Adam Caselman