Jonathan Folk Returns to St. Mary’s Residence and Shows Off His Growth and Artistry
The first signs of Autumn are rolling in around my desk where I fawn over these weekly projects. This time of year, I usually only want to look at cedar-clad quaint little cabins and vernacular architecture, but Jonathan Folk’s photographs of St. Mary’s Residence, really got the needle moving on my pulse!
The longer I look at this project the more I fall in love with it.
First of all the resolution and quality of Jonathan’s photos is insane. I know you can’t see it as well with the compressed web versions of these files, but take my word for it, when I was cruising through the full res versions he sent over, I feel like I could see every individual needle on the trees and each bump and textural piece of the facade catching the light on these beauties! Shew!
Anyhow, there are a lot of gorgeous photographs to see here, and at the risk of taking all of your day rambling on about how much I love them, I’ll just let you immerse yourself in them, and Jonathan’s details about his shoot day.
Jonathan kicks off, “This shoot was special to me because this property was one of the first architecturals that I had photographed when I first started my interiors photography career. Revisiting this property 4 years later, I was able to compare my photographic composition and editing styes from the past, which makes me feel proud and grateful of how far I have improved in my artistry.”
I can’t get enough of all of this gorgeous light and interplay of light, shadow, and shapes!
Jonathan photographed this project for J. George Martins (M.Arch) who updated St. Mary’s Residence, which was originally designed by RLA Architects. St. Mary’s Residence is located in Upper Lonsdale. Jonathan does a terrific job of immersing us in the North Vancouver terrain while showcasing this stunning home in relation to its surroundings.
He explains, “I wanted to accentuate the unique shapes of the architectural property by showcasing the raw concrete protrusions and beams on the exterior. This could be done by limiting distortion, so I had to step back further into the forest to get better angles of the property using tighter lenses, which enabled me to get unique compositions via framing the building with some of the forest branches.”
The surrounding foliage is such a nice touch. It provides the perfect foreground and backdrop for the house, which illuminates the woods and appears as a beacon in the tree line.
Back inside, Jonathan shows off the home with the practical lights on. I feel like this is a rarity these days, and he really nails it!
There is a pleasant warmth, but no overbearing color casts. Each scene looks true to life and is palatable and refined.
Back outside we get a lovely contrast through color. Another thing I appreciate about Jonathan’s work here is how he does not try to kill his shadows. He lets the dark bits be, well, dark!
“The property being in the forest on a hill, there were limited angles I could grab on foot, so I resorted to using a drone to capture the architectural’s positionality with respect to Vancouver BC’s north shore mountains,” he explains.
Shew! What a view!
I mean, what a truly gorgeous, special set of photographs. A million thank yous to Jonathan for sending this in!
Gush over more of Jonathan Folk’s work at jonathanfolk.ca and on Instagram @jonathanfolk.ca.
If you have a project you’d like to be considered for Project of the Week, you can submit it here.
