About
A clerestory is the row of windows that lets the light in high up.
It seemed like a reasonable thing to name a studio after. Two people, working out of a converted warehouse floor in Portland since 2016.
The studio
Small on purpose.
Two of us shoot, and the same two people do the editing. That is a deliberate limit rather than an ambition we have not got round to. It means the person who stood in the room deciding where the camera went is the person deciding what the final frame looks like, and nothing gets lost in a handover.
It also means we take on a fixed number of projects a month. If we are booked when you call, we will say so rather than squeeze your building into a bad hour.
Method
The shoot is decided before we arrive.
By the time we are on site with a camera, the interesting decisions have already been made.
We ask for the drawings, not because we are going to photograph them, but because they tell us which way the building faces and what the architect cared about. Then we work out where the sun will be on the shoot date and build the running order around it.
Interiors are photographed in the order their daylight peaks, which is usually not the order you would walk through the building. Exteriors are photographed elevation by elevation, which sometimes means coming back on a second morning. Both of those are planning problems, and planning problems are cheaper to solve than reshoots.
Retouching
What we will and will not do.
Architectural photography has an honesty problem, and it is worth being plain about where the line sits.
- We will correct perspective, balance color and exposure, and remove temporary clutter such as cones, hoses, bins and site signage.
- We will blend exposures so a window is not blown out and the room is not black, which is closer to how the eye saw it than any single frame.
- We will not change proportions, move structure, add skies that were not there, or remove a neighboring building because it spoils the view.
- We will not composite a landscape that does not exist. If the setting is part of the sell, we shoot it in the season it looks like that.
Where we work
Portland first, the Northwest gladly.
Most of the work is inside the Portland metro area, where travel is included and a second visit costs nothing extra. Beyond that we regularly shoot in Vancouver, Salem, Eugene, Hood River and across the Gorge, and we take Seattle and Bend projects where the schedule allows.
Anywhere past sixty miles, mileage is added at cost and nothing is added on top of it. For anything needing an overnight stay, that gets quoted up front too, and it appears in the fixed price rather than on the invoice afterwards.
Ask about your locationNext step
Come and see what the light does.
Twelve recent projects are online, and there is more in the archive if you want to see something closer to your own building. Ask and we will send it.