Two weeks ago I teamed up with photographer Jill Buckner to shoot both exteriors and interiors for Muffy McAuley and John Leinweber of their Excel Lofts, part of Renew Managements stable of properties here in Evanston, Illinois. They are wonderful lofts which even though it was empty had plenty of angles and opportunities to make great images. John was the architect of the properties and has a sense for the angles and features which make live/work lofts such a great place. Now I must confess I leased a loft from them for a little over 5 years at the Peacock Lofts so I might be a bit prejudice on how nice they are.
Our mission was to make 5-8 images of the building which they could use for various marketing programs. This was the first project Jill and I had teamed up on and it was very interesting to work with another photographer. We both have a background in architectural work so we split up who would do what and then began to work together leaving behind the original plan. We realized early on we both had a different style of looking at the space. Jill could see very interesting artistic angles while I saw more commercial views. We never stepped on each other’s toes, or invaded the others viewfinder as the case may be, and both of us thought the other one had made better images. We acted as assistants to each other when one of us was doing a shot and needed something moved or added to the image. The respect we had for each other and our way of working was perfectly in tune. It helped us make some great images in a short time and have a lot of fun in the process. while we were not in a competition the fact we were working with another very creative person raised our levels of inspiration and creativity as well. We made images we might not have had we done this project on our own.
In the end we brought in some props for the kitchen area, came back another day for dusk shots, and shot both exteriors (Richard) at dusk while Jill shot the interiors at dusk. So with one call Muffy and John received two photographers on the job who could produce more work in the time allotted than just one could. Makes great business sense.
If you have a project you’d like to talk about you can call either one of us! Check our websites for contact information and to see additional work. You can see more work from Excel Lofts using this link: http://www.mackphoto.com/ClientArea/Renew/Excel/
It is always great to work with someone whose work you admire so much. We are now working on several projects together so stay tuned for more news…
Enjoy!
Richard
