Project Type: Custom Residential Architecture
Commissioned by: D.T. Hubbell Architects
Location: Sandy Springs, GA
Scope: Custom home exteriors and interior main common spaces
Styling in collaboration with: Elissa Benzie
English Countryside Custom Residence in Sandy Springs
Client Usage: Portfolio | Social Media
AN ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE, DRAWN IN CURVES
Architect D.T. Hubbell envisioned this beautiful residence in the spirit of English architect C.F.A. Voysey, carrying the quiet of the English countryside onto a wooded sanctuary within a Sandy Springs neighborhood inside the perimeter.
Hubbell’s signature runs throughout the home’s interiors and exteriors in the form of organic curves and their projections, from the cylindrical tower and its garden approach to rounded barrel vaults over the dining room and breakfast nook, the swept bays off the living and dining rooms, the arched front door entry, and the deep-dormered skylights that rake the music room and the second-floor overlook. The photographic scope concentrated on the exteriors and the interior’s main common spaces where that architectural language speaks loudest in this very large home.
A COLLECTED HOME, BALANCED FOR THE CAMERA
The biggest challenge here was styling for the frame. The homeowners had collected with a real eye over many years, and every piece of every layer earned its place in their home. Density that lives easily within a space can often overwhelm a single photograph, which was its own challenge at every turn. Styling for the camera’s framing meant choosing among things that all belonged, deciding what stayed in a given shot and what rested outside it. The inhabitant was as much a part of the architect’s story as the architecture itself.
That balance called for a photo stylist on set, and a three-pass rhythm. Staying one or two setups ahead of the shot-list playbook, the styling team pared and arranged each space as the first pass. As I set up the camera and lighting for the next shot, they did a second pass dialing in the scene elements within the frame while evaluating the results in real time over live view on an iPad. For the final pass, I reviewed the scene with the architect through the lens of the framing and the story, making the last selections and final zhuzh to ensure the architecture and its inhabiting objects stayed on-plot. Then the same rhythm again for the next shot.
A COMPOSITIONAL TOUR THROUGHOUT A DAY
The photo set’s sequence follows an unconventional path by design, temporal first and spatial second by tracing the way an inhabitant might experience the home through the course of a day. It sets aside the typical floor plan tour for something that follows the light instead. The set opens outside on the front-elevation approach in early morning light, drifts indoors for breakfast as the sun climbs, steps back outside for the gardens’ later morning and midday views, then returns inside for the early and late afternoon.
Project Type: Custom Residential Architecture
Commissioned by: D.T. Hubbell Architects
Location: Sandy Springs, GA
Scope: Custom home exteriors and interior main common spaces
Styling in collaboration with: Elissa Benzie
AN ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE, DRAWN IN CURVES
Architect D.T. Hubbell envisioned this beautiful residence in the spirit of English architect C.F.A. Voysey, carrying the quiet of the English countryside onto a wooded sanctuary within a Sandy Springs neighborhood inside the perimeter.
Hubbell’s signature runs throughout the home’s interiors and exteriors in the form of organic curves and their projections, from the cylindrical tower and its garden approach to rounded barrel vaults over the dining room and breakfast nook, the swept bays off the living and dining rooms, the arched front door entry, and the deep-dormered skylights that rake the music room and the second-floor overlook. The photographic scope concentrated on the exteriors and the interior’s main common spaces where that architectural language speaks loudest in this very large home.
A COLLECTED HOME, BALANCED FOR THE CAMERA
The biggest challenge here was styling for the frame. The homeowners had collected with a real eye over many years, and every piece of every layer earned its place in their home. Density that lives easily within a space can often overwhelm a single photograph, which was its own challenge at every turn. Styling for the camera’s framing meant choosing among things that all belonged, deciding what stayed in a given shot and what rested outside it. The inhabitant was as much a part of the architect’s story as the architecture itself.
That balance called for a photo stylist on set, and a three-pass rhythm. Staying one or two setups ahead of the shot-list playbook, the styling team pared and arranged each space as the first pass. As I set up the camera and lighting for the next shot, they did a second pass dialing in the scene elements within the frame while evaluating the results in real time over live view on an iPad. For the final pass, I reviewed the scene with the architect through the lens of the framing and the story, making the last selections and final zhuzh to ensure the architecture and its inhabiting objects stayed on-plot. Then the same rhythm again for the next shot.
A COMPOSITIONAL TOUR THROUGHOUT A DAY
The photo set’s sequence follows an unconventional path by design, temporal first and spatial second by tracing the way an inhabitant might experience the home through the course of a day. It sets aside the typical floor plan tour for something that follows the light instead. The set opens outside on the front-elevation approach in early morning light, drifts indoors for breakfast as the sun climbs, steps back outside for the gardens’ later morning and midday views, then returns inside for the early and late afternoon.