Architectural Photography for Austin Canyon Builders

As an Architectural photographer in Austin, I recently had the opportunity to do some architectural photography here in Austin for Austin Canyon Builders and Mente Sowell Architects. I am a commercial photographer in Austin. Both of these companies were involved in the design and construction of two spectacular Velocity Banks and Amplify Bank locations.

Amplify Esperanza exterior architectural photograph

Amplify Esperanza interior lobby architectural photograph

Velocity Seton Center interior office with glass photograph

Velocity 12th interior lobby architectural photograph

Velocity 12th exterior twilight architectural photograph

Architectural Photography and Aerial Drone Photos for Barshop & Oles

Architectural photograph of HEB Lakeline AFTER EDITING

Architectural Photography and Aerial Drone Photos for Barshop & Oles

As a professional architectural photographer in Austin Texas, I am always looking for ways to improve my photographs. For Barshop and Oles Company I recently had the chance to think outside the box. For this photograph of HEB at Lakeline Mall in Austin, I decided to merge 10 photos of people walking in and out of the store and mask each of the customers in so that the store looked even more busy than it was. Since the sky was an ugly hazy gray I replaced it in Photoshops with the new SKY REPLACEMNT tool which is absolutely a lifesaver when editing exterior photographs.

Architectural photograph of HEB Lakeline BEFORE EDITING

Architectural photograph of HEB Lakeline AFTER EDITING

The client also wanted two aerial cityscapes – one of Austin and one of San Antonio, and asked me to try to blend the two into one photograph. The composite image has Austin on the Left and San Antonio on the Right. And of course I added a pretty sky to the blended image.

Austin San Antonio Cityscape blended

BEFORE EDITING Aerial Cityscape of Austin

BEFORE EDITING the composite of Austin on the left and San Antonio on the right

Beautiful Aerial Drone Video of Austin Scenes

At June 28, 2020
By Johnny Stevens
In aerial, austin, austin architectural photographer, beautiful, Drone Video, Fine Art, scenic, travel, video
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Beautiful Aerial Drone Video of Austin Scenes

During these spring Covid days my normal architectural photography work in Austin was slow, so I decided to spend some time shooting spectacular scenic video of mostly Austin attractions. There are also some scenes from Gavleston and Ponte Vedra. This is a perfect Spa Style video to watch during meditation, relaxation, yoga, pilates or during a hot bath. The video is shot with Mavic 2 Pro. This video shows off the best of Austin, Texas, and why it is that we all love Austin so much.

Floral and Scenic Photography for Students – Part 3:

At April 20, 2020
By Johnny Stevens
In austin architectural photographer, Austin photographer, Fine Art, Floral, light painting, lighting, Photography, Photography Mentor, Photoshop, spot lighting, studio
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Floral and Scenic Photography for Students -Part 3

All of my Mentees from Westlake High School.

Regarding Floral and Scenic Photography for Students, Some of my male students roll their eyes when I suggest shooting floral, including natural light as well as lighted still life and light painted floral arrangements. However they quickly realized how complicated it can get when we get into lighting and light painting arrangements. Chloe and I hung this orchid cluster from a cross bar and painted it with a flash light over about a 10 second exposure and then we masked in the spot lit areas in Photoshop.

Chloe Orchids Master fine art photography austin

Eleana and I drove to the Austin Botanical Gardens to photograph water lilies in natural light. The sun was just low enough to cast the edge of shadows to give this lily a bit of POP. In photoshop we duplicated the base layer and changed the blend mode to soft light. We duplicated it again and change the blend mode to multiply. Then we selected the flower, reversed the selection and masked in a water and lily pad background from a different shot.

Elena’s Lily master floral photography in natural light

AFTER EDITING Elena’s Lily master floral photography in natural light

The reason I like roses and orchids so much is because the petals are translucent, so they let light through them. This make them prime candidates for back lighting. This rose that Morgan and I photographed, is a great example. There is no front light. It was lit only from behind. You can see the flashlight Morgan was holding behind the rose in the first shot.

Morgan back lighting orange rose floral photography Austin

After editing Morgan back lighting orange rose floral photography Austin

I introduce my students to the different rules of composition early on. In this Gerber Daisey photograph, we used one single flash with a soft box on the right. Morgan did a great job of cropping the images so that the flowers fell perfectly into the 45 degree rule.

Gerber daisy one light cropped to 45 degree rule of composition

Nolan and I also photographed some blue orchids. This image is a combination of 3 different front spot lighted areas and two backlit areas. He did a great job of honoring the rule of thirds when he did his final crop.

Blue Orchid spot lighting for floral portrait

After Editing Blue Orchid spot lighting for floral portrait

And one more Orchid arrangement with Krishan. He also did front and back lighting and masked in spot lit areas to create his master image.

Purple Orchids by Krishan for masking

Purple orchid final after editing

Nolan and I attempted to emulate the still life floral style of Paulette Tavormina. I shopped at Central Market for the props, and my wife Samantha Stevens carved out some time from her Austin based job coaching day and built this gorgeous arrangement. Actually there is very little editing in this final image, just a couple of spot lit area on the right that the key light on the left could not reach.

Samantha Stevens building still life Floral arrangement for photograph

Floral still life photograph after editing

One of my favorite locations for introducing my students to landscape and scenic photography is the Pennybacker Bridge over Lake Austin. It is iconic, and the students always have something special to print up and take home with them. With Elena and Jake, the lesson involved learning how to evaluate a panoramic scene, leveling the camera to shoot 5 or 6 bracketed exposures and overlaping each shot so that Photoshop would be able to merge them all together into one scene. Here is what they came up with. Elena was delighted when friend of mine offered to pay her $100 for a 30 inch print of her panorama.

Elena’s panoramic scene of the Pennybacker Bridge in Austin Texas Floral and Scenic Photography

Jake’s panoramic scene of the Pennybacker Bridge in Austin Texas Floral and Scenic Photography

Morgan and I photographed a City-scape of Austin. You can tell that this was a few years ago – 2014 to be precise because the Frost Bank Building is featured and visible. Today, it is hard to find an angle where you can see any of that building.

Frost Bank building Austin cityscape circa 2014 Floral and Scenic Photography

Part 2: Portrait Photography: All of my Mentees from Westlake High School.

Part 2: Portrait Photography

All of my Mentees from Westlake High School.

I like to start my training off with Abstract which was covered in the last blog post. I do this because the subject matter is not talking back to us. I tell my students that Portrait and Wedding photography are a totally different beasts. Portrait is especially gruelling because the subject is looking dead at the camera (often), meaning staring at you the photographer, and waiting for you to finish this grueling experience of having to get their photograph taken. The more the subject is sweating, the more you sweat. More often than not, we as photographers are required to entertain the subject while navigating the controls on our camera (that we cannot see clearly because our sweat is dripping on the viewfinder) and praying to God that our wireless triggers and lighting will not suddenly stop communicating with each other (which they do). Portrait photography is indeed stressful for those reasons.

Krishan wanted to photograph an exotic car. My friend offered up his Bentley and we set up to do some spot lighting around the car which we would then composite each lit area together later in Photoshop.

spot Lighting Bentley with Austin architectural photographer Johnny Stevens

But I thought, HEY – why not add in an element of stress and pay a pretty model to pose by the car? That would be good training for a student!

Summer posing with Bentley

Summer pose 2 with Bentley

And the final edited image after we composted all the spot lighting on the house and the car and replaced the house windows with an ambient shot.

Final composition of Exotic Car Portrait with model Summer

For my Mentee Elena, we headed downtown and scouted for a spot to shoot a portrait of Lauren. Deep in an ally with homeless guys, was the back entrance to a bar on 6th street. I loved the graffitti. Elena and I switched positions holding the umbrella with a strobe.

Lauren set up with Elena holding the light

Lauren Portrait finalKrishan want

Elena needed a senior portrait done so I made her set up this scene on Barton Creek and then pose on a rock.

Elena self portrait

My friend Lane volunteered to be our subject for Nolan’s portrait exercise. Fortunately, Lane Orsak needed a new portrait to promote his new book called Dylan’s Divide and he had some new artwork he just completed. And even more fortunately, Lane’s portrait turned out to be one of my favorite ever. Nolan and I spot lighted the background and composited those behind an image of Lane which we lighted with one big soft light on camera right, and a kicker light on camera left.

Lane Orsak Portrait final

I took Morgan with me to a commercial shoot of Austin artist Truman Marquez’s Gallery. We photographed two models separately and composited them both into the final image.

Art Gallery portrait

Portrait Photography Austin

Morgan also helped me arrange and execute a more complicated Portrait that I photographed for the purposes of entering for judging with the Professional Photographers of America. We hired 3 models and rented the outfits from Lucy in Disquise here in Austin. Rocky the lab was free.

Samantha helping set up the Gangster Scene

“Stalemate” Gangster photograph final

And also for Krishan we set up a backdrop and hired a model to do some 3 point lighting set ups, including main light, bounced fill light, and kicker light.

Skylar Portrait set up

Skylar Portrait final

Part 1: Abstract Photography for Students, All of my Mentees from Westlake High School

Part 1: Abstract Photography for Students

All of my Mentees from Westlake High School.

Abstract Photography for Students is a challenge. I thought it was time to assemble all of the educational photographic projects I have done with my senior students of the Independent Study Program at Westlake High School over the last 8 years. I was surprised when I went back into my photography archives to see some of the projects that I have forgotten about. I am doing this in 5 Posts so the reader does not get overwhelmed. This first post is about our Abstract Photography exercises. So here we go.

When I agree to teach a student, I tell them that my approach to teaching is to expose them to as many different genres of photography as possible, so they can learn how to leverage the settings on their cameras, read natural light, learn how to control flash and strobe light, how to work with humans who hate to have their photos taken, and evaluate the environment for challenges.

The photography genres I like to introduce them to are:

ABSTRACT PHOTOGRAPHY:

My first student 8 years ago was Elena. With her I learned how difficult shooting rising smoke is. We learned that having a flash at 90 degrees to a smoking piece of incense was better than having two flashes, one in each side. The contrast within the smoke was better and made it easier to identify an interesting moment within the otherwise chaotic billowing smoke. Then we edit the image mostly by eliminating surrounding smoke that did not lend itself to the formation we identified. More often that not (and this goes for painting too) we tend to identify with abstract formations that remind of some variation of human forms. Here are Elena’s images:

I had forgotten about this image, and today it is one of my favorite. It is whimsical and requires some time to process its intricacies.

Elena’s Abstract Smoke by Austin fine art photographer Johnny Stevens

This one I called Wisp of Elena. It clearly has some alien life forms that attract the eye….

Elena’s Abstract Smoke #2 Alien formation by Austin abstract photographer Johnny Stevens

My mentee Nolan shot this smoke image. Very often the way smoke rises and curls, it tends to show formations of vertebrae and human bones.

Nolan smoke abstract photography austin

And this one from my mentee Morgan;

Morgan abstract smoke photography by Austin photographer Johnny Stevens

For Jake’s Abstract Smoke Photography exercise, he created 2 edited versions from this first raw file.

Jake’s original raw file of smoke rising

Final edit of abstract smoke rising photograph

Final edit 2 of abstract smoke rising photograph

My mentee Krishan and I tested our reflexes at shooting water drops in a glass.

Krishan’s composition of 4 drops of water

After an hour of gruelling timing to pull the trigger at the right time we learned that we could not get the effect we were looking for which is achieved by buying a Pluto Valve Drop Regulator. It releases drops timed exactly with the shutter of the camera, but more importantly it releases 2 consecutive drops so that the upward splash of the first drop smashes into the one coming down and creates a beautiful mushroom effect. As seen in these two examples:

water drop 1 by fstoppers

waterdrop 2 by 500 px blog

To introduce my students to compositing in Photoshop, I will often give them the task of taking a series of images and composite parts of them into a master image. In this case I gave Nolan these images from my Mannequin folder of images to create a composite:

Mannequin for abstract photoshop compositing lesson Johnny Stevens Austin Photographer

Final composite by Nolan

Architectural photography for RollFab

I was recently asked to do some Architectural photography for RollFab in Austin. They are based in Phoenix. RollFab makes metal panels that look like wood. They offer a full line of the highest quality metal roofing systems, siding and metal wall panels for architectural, commercial, industrial, and residential projects of every kind. Architects, contractors and installers appreciate the quality service from their professional staff. They are ready to answer any question, and help devise custom solutions to individual project needs. This project is located at the Village at the Triangle in Austin. It is pretty cool stuff so I thought it would be nice to toss in a few drone shots of the building too because actually getting up an additional 15 feet higher was very helpful in showing the vertical side panels of the RollFab product on the building.

Architectural photography in Austin for RollFab

RollFab products installed at Village at Triangle architectural photography Austin

Architectural photo shoot for VRBO and AirBnB

I was just asked to shoot an Architectural photo shoot for VRBO and AirBnB. The home is tucked away in Rob Roy, It has a lovely views of Barton Creek Country Club. There were 2 different rentals, the bottom floor of the main house and a separate quest house. They were both beautifully decorated and appointed. Here is what the client had to say on Google reviews:

First, and most important, the quality of Johnny’s work is EXCEPTIONAL. The way he selected the angles, lighting, composition created remarkable images well above my highest expectations.
Also, he is very friendly and pleasant to work with, did the job quickly and thoroughly, returning several times to take pictures in daylight, twilight, using a drone, …
Highly recommended.

Architectural image of Austin home rental

Exterior twilight architectural shot Austin

Sunset rule wins again.

At June 27, 2018
By Johnny Stevens
In Aerial photography, american campus, austin architectural photographer, Austin photographer, Fine Art
0

The 20 minutes after sunset rule wins again.

I was shooting an exterior of this apartment pool in Tucson last week. I always ask the client to arrange with maintenance to have the pool lights in the pool and the perimeter lights forced on at least 30 minutes before sunset. Normally these lights are on solar cells or light sensors and turn themselves on when the sun light dissipates and the ambient light gets dark enough to trigger them on. Inevitably, they turn themselves off way after sunset and too late for the perfect twilight shot. I was watching the sun go down and as it approached 20 minutes after sunset, I was concerned that this scene was going to be boring. The sun must not behave the same in Arizona. But I shot my bracketed shots anyway, and because I was so close to the pool, I decided to shoot and upper image and then shift down with my 17mm tilt shift lens and shoot a lower image so I could stack them together in Photoshop to get more room for the top and bottom of the image.

Entrada Real in Tuscon twilight exterior real estate student housing photography

Aerial Drone

At May 30, 2018
By Johnny Stevens
In aerial, Aerial photography, aerial video, architectural photos, areial video, austin architectural photographer, Austin photographer, drone, Drone photography, Drone Video
0

How many times have I been shooting a structure and wishing I could get just 20 feet up rather than shooting from the ground?

Aerial architectural photo with Mavic Pro 2 Johnny Stevens

ThinkEast Apartment Aerial architectural photo with Mavic Pro 2 Austin

Alas, this is just what the drones offer us. Not only do they offer a different perspective on a structure, but we can add video to leverage aerial motion and feature the surroundings. Add a bit of moody music and you have a very compelling representation of a property. My drone of choice is the DJI Mavic Pro 2 with the Hasselblad camera simply because I can pack it in my photo bag and travel with it on planes. The camera delivers a superior still image as well.

Drone Photography and Video by Johnny Stevens

FAA Licensed Drone Pilot

FAA Registration FA3347KRKA