That’s it – the last project of the week 2024! It’s only fitting that we end the year with a spectacular project from APA friend and Project of the Week veteran Christian Santiago. I always admire Christian’s work for the elbow grease he puts into it. A little more problem solving and attention is required with every shoot, and Christian is a master at getting things done with great results! The end product are thoughtful, glamorous images of its subject. his dedication and problem-solving skills speak volumes about his craft and attention to detail. It’s always exciting to see someone make the effort to not only do the work, but elevate it into something special and thoughtful.
Christian’s filming at Villa Serenita is a great example of this. Photographed for a real estate agent, Christian needed to sell the lifestyle and magic of this villa. A bit of lighting ingenuity, well-timed wild peacock cameos, models, and “well-connected clients who can call in favors at any time” set this project apart!
“I’m more than happy to talk about the complexity of this shoot,” Christian begins. “This was shot for a real estate agent, so the intention is different from a typical architectural photo shoot. I had to sell the sun and the lifestyle as much as the architecture. Unfortunately, we had gloomy, overcast weather for most of the shoot and my client playfully reminded me that he “can’t sell a haunted house.”
Christian had to “turn on the sun” several times throughout this project. “Without sunlight, the image had no texture, contrast, or depth. So I had a huge tripod right behind the tree that shot through its leaves and branches to create pockets of light on the leaves and the table and create shadows on the ground. A circular gradient and the ‘Linear Light’ blending mode in Photoshop created a ‘light source’ that adds to the illusion by motivating the flash,” he explains.
He says: “Most, if not all, of the shots (with the exception of the main balcony with peacocks on the roof) were heavily subsidized by flashes which I did my best to hide and motivate so that They look like natural light. The house is a blend of Mediterranean Revival architecture mixed with a thick canopy of tropical leaves throughout the grounds.
Inside, well-composed shots carry our gaze through each scene, noting the craftsmanship and appeal of each space.
I asked Christian to detail some of his favorite shots from this project:
“My favorite interior photo from the shoot, especially because of the eclectic, bespoke interior design reflecting a life well lived, is of the family room. I love when a home’s decor feels more like someone lives there rather than someone organizing and outsourcing their interior design. It seems personal. Again, there was not much light coming in and little direction.
I used the room’s curtains as a natural diffusion fabric and kept them closed while I shot three strobes I had installed outside through them, creating an extremely soft but directional light source that flooded the piece while preserving just enough depth. A simple plan 99% done behind closed doors. I just needed an extra plate with the window open for painting later.
“This shot was mostly a stroke of luck,” he says. “I had some time to kill while they pressure-washed the coral in the garden and decided, ‘Why not get an intimate vignette’ from the master bedroom balcony? I found the warmth of the stucco and terracotta tiles of the roof to be a pleasant compliment to the massive, century-old banyan tree that frames it.
The tree also created interesting shadows and textures on the stucco from the early morning sun. I perched my camera with the Canon 50mm Tilt-shift on my 25ft Manfrotto tripod/stand connected to a cam ranger and thought that would be the end of it…except my cam ranger battery was almost dead. I went back to my car to get a new one and that’s when the picture changed drastically.
Peacocks are a common sight in Miami’s coconut district. They are native to Southeast Asia, but about 100 years ago people who had too much money kept them as exotic pets and, as you can imagine, some escaped. They established a breeding population in the area and have existed ever since thanks to the lack of natural predators in South Florida and local legislation that prohibits their destruction and disposal. They are part of the neighborhood, much to the chagrin of homeowners who can do without their sharp claws that scratch their cars and their acidic droppings that damage their homes.
Anyway, a flock of them was wandering around when the neighbor’s large Black Labrador Retriever escaped from the house – the poor old man desperately in tow – and started terrorizing the birds like something… ‘an episode of Tom and Jerry as they disappeared in a buff. dust and ran in and out of the bushes. This lasted for about half a minute until the peacocks suddenly remembered “Hey, we’re birds and we can fly” and flew to the safety of the roof of the property.
That’s when the light bulb went off. I walked across the acre to the outside of the property where my camera was set up to connect my ranger cam and take a few photos just as the peacocks came into frame. My client loved the image so much that he asked to leave the camera set up so he could call his friend to come pose for us.
He continues: “This plan took a little more planning. I knew that the entrance to the house did not receive direct sunlight at this time of year, as the sun rises and sets behind it. This contradicted my client’s hope for an ethereal “sunny” early morning glow to highlight the colorful landscaping and intimate courtyard. Without any direct light, the facade was in a sad, dark shadow resembling the lines of the pre-era grounds more than a royal villa.
The solution was to recreate the sun. Simple, right?
Enter the hero of this shoot: the same 25-foot tripod. Except this time, it would serve as a lighting stand. I set up my Godox AD 1200 on a full height camera just behind a brick wall and ivy and started painting the house in the same general direction as the setting sun to keep it motivated and “believable”.
The height of the tripod allowed me to better mimic the direction of the sun and a CTO gel kept the color consistent. But there was another problem to solve. I couldn’t move back far enough to capture everything in the photo. Even with my 24mm Tilt-shift on my GFX. So I had to move the lens to put together a panorama in post-production. This required two passes because I had to do it once with the flash layers and once with the ambient layers.
Then in Photoshop I aligned the two images together and painted with enough ambient light to soften the flash shadows while preserving directionality and texture.
“I had to do the same thing with the twilight photo of this same composition, except this time the lighting was softer and more motivated by the practical lights of the house and its surroundings,” he says.
What a shoot! A million THANKSThanks to Christian for submitting this and sharing much of his process with us!
It’s a fitting way to end the year, showcasing someone who always goes above and beyond!
Skip to csantiagophoto.com to see more of Christian’s work on the web. You can find him on Instagram @csantiagophoto.
If you have a project that you would like to consider for Project of the Week, you can submit it here.