Squechee Clean

Squechee Clean is a new commercial space located in Quechee, Vt. Designed by Barrett Architecture of White River Junction, Vt and construction by Trumbull/ Nelson of Hanover, NH.The design is a very traditional New England styled barn that happens to have a  laundry mat on the inside and a car wash on the outside. I was asked by marketing manager Maria Schindler of T/N to create photos of this unique and beautiful building. The interiors were created on a dreary, rainy September day. A return visit yielded a beautiful fall day in Vermont. My Assistant and I arrived about 2.5 hours before sunset. The first task was to clean up the parking lot and grounds of leaves. So out comes the leaf blower for some fall clean up. My goals were to create multiple shots the builder could use for marketing/website/advertising purposes, create both landscape and portrait orientations of the building, the building would be photographed at a 2 point perspective from two different spots on the property, and I knew with the time of day we would be able to get a great blue hour shot of the building.  During the time we were creating images the building was open for business. We were asking people to not park close to the building. Everyone was very corporative in helping us complete our work.. Once All the day time images were created we set up at roughly a 45 degree angle on the right side of the property. It gave us a very nice 2 point perspective with the front of the building and the entrance being showcased. I knew we had the right angle when the sun dropped just below the horizon. We had amazing soft light, we soft shadows draping the entrance side of Squeechee Clean, and the front facade had soft shadows. We still had plenty of light in the shadows, and at this point the automatic lights had come creating some very highlights on the barn like structure. The one thing I did not plan on but adds soo much to the finished image is the moon over the building.A great bonus. This is not a photoshop addition in post. Speaking of post production. Architecture images require intense retouching to reach my final vision. Some of the post work involves correcting barrel distortion, making sure the verticals and horizontals are straight, any dust spots are removed, while we did a great job of cleaning up the leaves  a few still needed to be digitally cleaned-up. Next up is color correction. Usually takes me the longest time for this step. In this image there are 3 distinct color casts that needed to be cleaned up or reduced, blues in the shadows the orange lights from inside needed to be toned down, and thwart cast on the entrance side. Anything that has a shiny surface, or white will show a cast and needs to be fixed. All the white trim, white signs, the washing machines on the interior will need work. other items worked on in this image included removing wires and a telephone pole on the right side of the image, dodging and buring, and I did increase the blue in the sky. I use the opacity of my layer to increase or decrease the effect. My goal is to just barely see the change. A little goes a long way. The final step is to sharpen the image. Whenever possible I use actions in my workflow to save time and money.Depending on the amount of work required a single image may take two hours to finish. The one thing I may change on this finished image is remove the stop sign. It bugs me for some reason. The end result is the client is supper happy.