small mountain house

[OPEN_RANGE]

This is a house to be built at a ski/golf resort. It is not ski in-out so a summer scene was best. I shot the photography this past summer before the house was designed. It was all shot with my drone and I was sort of "flying blind" without a design to reference. This view is from the NW. I got some other good shots and hopefully can convince the client that another view from SW (showing bigger mountains in background) is worthwhile. They want at least one interior but the design is such that it's hard to arrive at a good view of the Living Room.

[dayna_beaver]

I'm starting to recognize those mountains... or at least think I am! Out of all the work I've seen, this is probably my favorite. Really balanced... relaxing to look at. I can see some tiling in your stone and other then that, the only thing I would suggest is more detail. Trim, facias, gutters, rain water leaders, vents, door & windows hardware, types, ect... Just curious, what are you shooting on and flying?

Again, really nice work!

[OPEN_RANGE]

Hi Dayna. Thanks for your kind review! That’s funny about recognizing the mountains. That is the upper reaches of the ski resort. I am using an architect’s Revit model on this so whatever detail they include is shown. The design calls for a lot of matte black for roofing, fascia, rails, snow guards, etc. They do not use gutters.

I am using a dji mini 3 pro and shooting at the 2x (digital) zoom = 48 mm focal length. Not ideal but the price point was at my upper limit, so a drone with a better camera(s) was too expensive. I like/need to shoot the mountains at around 45mm so they look “full size”. Even for interiors, I might have the camera in a room at 24mm, but the mountains seen thru the windows are shot at @ 45mm. Thus my tag line “better than real”.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Here is the Southwest view. I showed a rough draft of this to the realtor and he immediately said no and wanted to use the Northwest view (shown above). I could not stop myself from developing this. did not take too long since I already had all the work done on first (Northwest) view. I'm going to show it to the realtor and developer and see if they may want to use it for some reasonable amount of $ more.

[glorybound]

Layer some sky reflections on the glass; I think it'll add depth. You might have to lower the interior brightness. Nice looking image!

[OPEN_RANGE]

Very good suggestion as always, Bobby. Thanks!

Will see abut doing that. Thinking best way would be to increase glass reflection amount and decrease opacity a bit? See how much the environment (dome light w vray sky linked to vray sun) will show. plus, like you say, lower the interior lighting as needed.

This Southwest view is still a personal project. Something I don’t often do. It seemed like it had potential so….

[fixeighted]

Without a doubt it's the better view by far. It's more balanced, has a more pleasing view of the mountains which is their selling point, has much improved, interesting shadows/highlights.
and more believable foliage integration.
The only thing is, yes, the interior lighting, which is too bright and I think too uniformly yellow.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Thanks Bart, I’m going to adjust that inside lighting and see about getting some reflection on it. Will post an update.

It is a better view of the house. Unfortunately the realtor is vapor locked on showing the big window wall in the first view. Hopefully they will appreciate this “secondary” view once they see the finished product (I showed to them it as grayscale initially)

[OPEN_RANGE]

Here is a minor update. Tried to get some trees/sky reflecting in the windows but it seems the inside has to be too dark to see any of that. I did tone down the amount of interior light.

I hope the clients feels that it's worth using.

[francomanko]

so i hope you dont mind, but i just did a few quick tweaks in camera raw and photoshop, pretty subtle so not time consuming really, but making a little more contrast in the shadow areas, reducing saturation (your images to me are pretty much always too saturated.) But also, i think it wouldnt hurt to focus a little more on certain things, like :-

• Shadows of the trees on the road, look odd, with the straight lines...maybe use separate scattered trees behind the camera where you can be a little more controlled with whats casting shadows.
• The driveway texture feels rushed.
• Top right of the image theres a hole in the background geo or something.
• Get more contrast with the building walls that are in sun and those in shadow (quick to do in PS).
• Think about the color difference of objects in distance.
• Add some quick variation in the hues/saturation etc of the trees in PS.

Stuff like that..anyway heres my image..and like i say its just a quick rough pass in PS as an example...im by no means an expert.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Hi and thanks for your comments! I am attaching the backplate photo that I shot with ny drone this past summer. That may speak to some of your observations? I think the "hole" in the background you mention may be the roof of the existing house next door?

[francomanko]

gotcha, ignore my tree shadow comments then