Moving buildings and changing environments

At Taylor Photo our clients often ask us to perform a little "visual magic" in order to achieve something that would not be possible through standard photography. We are uniquely adept at changing or accentuating a product's color, adding a blue sky to an exterior shot that originally had a dull, cloudy sky or adding/removing a person from a group portrait.

Occasionally, we get very challenging and complicated assignments which force us to dig deep into our bag of visual tricks. Completing these more complex jobs enable our clients to do amazing things. If we do our job well it enables an architect or builder to show his client what a building (or even a whole city!) will look like before the design or construction has begun. Obviously, this gives them many advantages and opportunities that they would not have otherwise. For example, a builder can show what a project looks like before it is finished and therefore begin advertising and selling the idea or product before it is completed. In the fast paced world of building and real estate where quick turnover spells the difference between success and failure, the achievement of our "visual magic" is critical.

Below are three case studies illustrating how we’ve helped some of our customers achieve results that far exceeded their expectations. Click on the related images to see the results up close.

The Whitney Museum:
Years ago, before Photoshop, we used collage techniques to achieve special effects. During the 1980’s, we were hired by the Whitney Museum in New York City to show how a Michael Graves’ design would look incorporated into the streetscape of Madison Avenue. This project involved photographing the Whitney Museum from several different angles. Then, after a realistic small scale model was built, we photographed it in the studio. Special care had to be taken to simulate the exact angles and lighting that occurred in the original street scenes that we had photographed. Any small discrepancy in perspective or in the lighting would ruin the illusion of the model as a full sized building. Here you can see the before and after results.

425 Fifth Avenue:
More recently, we have been hired by a New York Ad agency to complete a project for RFR Davis which is constructing a sixty seven story residential high rise designed by Michael Graves. The project has received a lot of media attention because of the way in which it will be changing the New York skyline. Trevor Davis, the CEO and president, recognized a need to begin advertising and selling the project well before construction was to begin. The first part of the project was to show the dramatic way in which the new building impacted the existing Manhattan skyline. Since only a simple elevation drawing had been completed, we chose an angle that showed the building in elevation and which incorporated the Empire State and Chrysler buildings in the final picture. We chose to photograph the skyline from Long Island City looking across the East River at dusk. In Photoshop we created lighting effects on the drawing to simulate dusk conditions on the building. The images were then merged in Photoshop to create the final result.

Matzel and Mumford Townhouses:
A New Jersey builder who needed to create advertising for an unfinished building asked us to add landscaping to a building that was still under construction. We chose to photograph the building at dusk and then add landscaping that we borrowed from our photo archives. Many details of the building were unfinished so we also created or borrowed small details to complete the building. There was no electricity or lighting inside the building so we added light to all of the windows to create the effect that the building was ready to be occupied.