“I Had to Sell the Sunshine and the Lifestyle as Much as the Architecture” – Christian Santiago on Photographing one of the Oldest Homes in Miami

This is it – the last Project of the Week of 2024! It’s fitting that we’ll close out the year with a spectacular project by APA friend and Project of the Week veteran Christian Santiago. I always admire Christian’s work for the elbow grease he puts in to it. A little extra problem solving and TLC is required on every shoot, and Christian is a master at getting things done with great results! The end product are thoughtful, glam images of his subject at hand. dedication and problem-solving speaks volumes about his craft and attention to detail. It’s always exciting to see someone put in the effort to not just get the job done, but to elevate it to something special and thoughtful.

Christian’s shoot at Villa Serenita is a prime example. Photographed for a realtor, Christian needed to sell the lifestyle and magic at this villa. A little lighting ingenuity, well timed wild peacock cameos, models, and “well-connected clients who can call in favors at a moment’s notice,” set this project apart!

“I am more than happy to talk about the complexity of this shoot,” Christian starts. “This was shot for a realtor, so the intention is different than a typical architectural photoshoot. I had to sell the sunshine 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” various times throughout this project. “Without sunlight, there was no texture, contrast, or depth to the image. So I had a massive tripod camera right behind the tree firing through its leaves and branches to create pockets of light on the leaves and the table and create some shadows on the ground. A circular gradient and the ‘Linear Light’ blend mode in Photoshop created a “light source” camera right that adds to the illusion by motivating the flash,” he explains.

He says, “Most, if not all of the shots, (except for the master balcony with peacocks on the roof) were heavily subsidized by strobes that I did my best to hide and motivate so they felt like natural light. The home is a mix of Mediterranean revival architecture blended into a thick canopy of tropical folia throughout the lot.”

Inside, well composed shots carry our eyes through each scene, noting the craftsmanship and appeal of each space.

I asked Christian to break down a few of his favorite shots from this project for us:

“My favorite interior shot of the shoot, more so because of the eclectic, bespoke interior design reflecting a life well lived, is of the family room. I love it when a home’s decor feels more like someone lives there versus someone who is curating and outsourcing their interior design. This feels personal. Again, there was not much light coming in and not a lot of direction to it.

I used the room’s curtains as natural diffusion cloth and kept them closed while I fired three strobes through them that I had set up outside, creating an extremely soft but directional light source that flooded the room while preserving just enough depth. A simple shot that was 99% in-camera. I just needed an extra plate with the window open to paint in later.”

“This shot was mostly a stroke of luck,” he tells. “I had some time to kill while they were pressure-cleaning the coral in the backyard and decided ‘Why not get an intimate vignette’ of the master bedroom balcony? I found the warmth of the stucco and terracotta tiles on the roof to be a pleasant compliment to the massive 100-year-old banyan tree framing it.

The tree also created some interesting shadows and textures on the stucco from the early morning sun. I perched my camera with the Canon 50mm Tilt-shift up onto my 25-foot Manfrotto tripod/stand connected to a cam ranger and figured that would be the end of it… except my cam ranger’s batter was almost dead. I walked back to my car to get a fresh one and that’s when the shot dramatically changed.

Peacocks are a common sight in the coconut grove neighborhood of Miami. They’re originally from Southeast Asia, but about 100 years ago people with too much money on their hands kept them as exotic pets, and as you can imagine some escaped. They established a breeding population in the area and have been around since thanks to having no natural predators in South Florida and local legislation that prohibits their harm and removal. They’re part of the neighborhood much to the frustration of property owners who can do without their sharp claws scratching their cars and acidic poop damaging their homes.

Anyway, a flock of them was roaming around when the neighbor’s large Black Labrador Retriever escaped from the house – the poor old man hopelessly in tow – and proceeded to terrorize the birds like something out of a Tom and Jerry episode as they disappeared into a buff of dust and ran in and out of the bushes. This went on for about half a minute until the peacocks suddenly remembered ‘Hey we’re birds and we can fly’ and flew up into the safety of the property’s rooftop.

That’s when the lightbulb went off. I sprinted the acre back to the property’s exterior where my camera was set up to connect my cam ranger and pop off some shots just as the peacocks entered the frame. My client loved the image so much that he asked to keep the camera set up so he could call his friend to come over and model for us.”

He continues, “This shot required a bit more planning. I knew that the home’s entrance doesn’t get any direct sunlight this time of year as the sun rises and sets behind it. This contradicted my client’s hope for a ‘sunny’ ethereal, early morning glow to highlight the colorful landscaping and intimate courtyard. Without any direct light, the facade was in a sad, gloomy shadow resembling something more along the lines of the land before time 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 be used as a light stand. I rigged my Godox AD 1200 at full height camera right behind a wall of brick and ivy and proceeded to light paint the house from the same general direction as the setting sun to keep it motivated and ‘believable.’

The height of the tripod allowed me to better emulate the direction of the sun and a CTO gel kept the color consistent. But there was another problem to solve. I couldn’t back up far enough away to get everything in the shot. Even with my 24mm Tilt-shift on my GFX. So I had to shift the lens around to stitch a panorama in post. This required two passes as 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 in enough ambient light to soften the shadows from the flash while still preserving the directionality and texture.”

“I had to do the same thing with the twilight shot of this same composition except this time the lighting was softer and more motivated by the practical lights in and around the home,” he says.

What a shoot! A million thank yous to Christian for submitting this in and sharing so much of his process with us!

It’s a fitting way to close out the year, showcasing someone who consistently goes above and beyond!

Pop over 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 you’d like to be considered for Project of the Week, you can submit it here.