Recent Interior Photography

Some photos I made recently of several rooms in a home in Los Altos Hills, CA, for Kacey Fitzpatrick of Avalon Enterprises, a San Francisco Bay Area design-and-build company.

Wine Cellar

Bath

Bath Detail

Bath Detail

Bath Detail

Recent Work-Multifamily Property

A photo a did for Fisher-Berzack Institutional Advisors, to illustrate their brokering the sale of Park Merced Apartments in San Francisco.

This assignment presented a number of challenges. The property, which contains 3,221 units spread over 150 acres, is the second largest apartment property west of the Mississippi. Furthermore, it comprises a mixture of high-rise and low-rise buildings. In addition, at the time of year I shot this, fog is quite common on the Northern California Coast, and good weather is essential for making a compelling exterior photo of a subject such as this.

As to the size and design of the property, the goal was to give a sense of the size of the property while still creating a strong photo that would also clearly show both the high-rise buildings containing flats and the low-rise townhome buildings. Getting up very high and far away might have been adequate for  encompassing the whole property, but might not have shown the buildings as clearly as a closer view. However, a closer view still needed to provide some sense of the scale of the property.

As to the weather, that was a matter of waiting it out.

Park Merced Apartments, San Francisco, CA

Architectural Photography Assignment

Here are some photos I did of a substantially rebuilt home in Los Gatos, CA for Sean Pearson of RUF Project.

Great Room

Great Room

Great Room

Master Bedroom/Bath

Living Room/Fireplace/Entrance

An Eichler Home for the 21st Century

When John Citrigno acquired an Eichler Home in Sunnyvale, California, after the owners defaulted on the mortgage he held he saw an opportunity. Earlier in his life John wanted to become a builder and even considered becoming an architect, but went into real estate investment and financial services instead. He had grown up in a part of the Bay Area that has many Eichler Homes and had always been a great admirer of them. With this house he could combine his long-time interests in building, architecture and Eichlers to create an Eichler Home for the 21st Century. Thus John decided to undertake a complete rebuilding of the house to high contemporary standards, while staying true to the fundamental aesthetics of its design.

In addition to his admiration for the homes that my grandfather, Joseph Eichler, built in the Bay Area in the 1950s and 1960s, John also admires the man himself for his commitment to making high-quality modern architectural design available to those of modest means. John’s concept for the rebuild of his Eichler was to try to imagine what my grandfather might have done had he been building homes today.

The heyday of Eichler Homes was concurrent with the rise of what is now known as Silicon Valley. The design aesthetic of these tract homes, built in the Mid-Century Modern style, had strong appeal for many who were involved in the high tech industry in the 1950s and 60s, as well as for people who would be involved in high tech later on, such as Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple Computers. Although Jobs never lived in an Eichler Home, the part of Silicon Valley in which he grew up contained many of them, and many of his childhood friends and classmates lived in them, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Apple’s first employee, Bill Fernandez. Jobs credited the design of Eichler Homes and the way they were built as a major influence for him in the development of Apple products.

John, who lived near Jobs as a child and was a classmate of his, credits Jobs as an additional major influence for his concept of a “21st Century Eichler”, specifically, the influence of Jobs’s attention to detail and quest for perfection, and his dedication to creating designs that combine maximum functionality and user-friendliness with a clean, contemporary aesthetic that is minimalist in style yet never sterile, at prices that are affordable for the masses.

I think that John has been exceedingly successful in his undertaking, and I have no doubt that my grandfather would be very pleased with the result. I can’t speak for Steve Jobs, but my guess is that he also would have been very pleased with the result and would have seen evidence of a kindred spirit. 

Front Exterior

Atrium

Living Room

Master Bedroom

Master Bath

Back Yard

Kitchen/Dining Area

Rear Exterior

The Eichler X-100 House

A well written and informative blog article on the Eichler X-100 steel-framed house: Eichler Experimental: The X-100

The article doesn't mention it, but the noted architect Raphael Soriano also designed a steel-framed house for Eichler Homes, which I believe is also located in the San Mateo Highlands.

Recent Landscaping Photography

Some colorful landscaping at an office complex in Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley Landscaping

New Landscape/Lifestyle Photography

I revisited this location, which I originally shot with my iPhone, to see what I could do with my "real" camera. It took several sessions before I arrived at the combination of lens, lighting and human presence that seemed to satisfy me, at least for the moment.

Near Fort Funston, San Francisco, CA