Furniture Maker

I photographed a shoot last week for a lifestyle piece in Luxe Magazine. My subject was Ethan Hutchinson, a local furniture maker. We photographed Ethan in his beautiful wood shop in Denver. Ethan does beautiful work and a large part of his process is by hand. One of his rocking chairs goes for about $2500. Here are some photos from the shoot.


Ethan sitting in one of his chairs. His sketches for his chairs are in chalk on the floor behind him. Most furniture builders design on the computer, but he likes doing it by hand.


Ethan surrounded by chairs in various stages of construction.


These last two shots are of Ethan filing down his chairs by hand. It is amazing the amount of labor that goes into a chair. At one point I asked him if he needed a break because he had been going for some time while I took pictures. He responded, "I do this all day".

The Afro Project

I am starting a new series of portraits that I am calling "The Afro Project". It is will be a series of portraits of people of all ethnicities and ages with 'fros'. We are going for an urban vibe and everything will be shot with the same lighting and steel background for the series.

Our first shoot was yesterday. As a photographer you have a vision in your head of what you want to capture when you set up a shoot. Yesterday was a perfect example of the photographer and subject working together to go beyond what was initially envisioned and getting some even better photos. My subject, Greg, is a skater and showed up for the shoot with his headphones on, aviator glasses and a skateboard. We went through my intial ideas for the shoot and then started having fun with his "props". Here are some of the results...

PhotoShelter & Stock

Over the last few years a lot of my photographs have been collecting dust on hard drives. I've shot a lot of travel and other photography with stock in mind, but had the constant challenge of workload. I have always been too busy with "real work" to do the little things to get those photos ready to sell. This included image selection, post-production, titling, captioning and keywording the images. With a lot of help from Stephanie and Ryan and some more time to dedicate to it, we finally made it happen.

The first big step to get my images out there for sale was to put them up on PhotoShelter. PhotoShelter is a stock site that allows photographers to submit images for their review. Those that are accepted are then sold through their site.

Take a look at my page and you can see around 1,000 images that I have taken from 2003-2008. Since they had to go through a review process, you are seeing the best of the best. Here are a couple of photos that are on the site.

My most viewed photo so far on the site.

A photo that was recently selected as an "editor's choice".

Next step is going to be to start submitting to other stock agencies to try and get them to represent some of my work. Wish me luck!

Spain Photos

I returned earlier this week from Spain. It was a great trip filled with some amazing sites (I fell in love with Valencia & Segovia) and local culture (we went to a FC Barcelona soccer match, a flamenco show and a bullfight in Madrid). Below is a sampling of photos from the trip. Look for many more to come!

Overlooking the town of Segovia and the Cathedral.

Matador and bull at Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas in Madrid.

Gran Via at dusk in Madrid.

Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias in Valencia.

Bell Tower on the Valencia Cathedral.

Travel Photography

I truly feel blessed to do what I do for a living. I was able to find my passion in life and turn it into my career. It has allowed me to get to know some great people, spend the amount of time I want with my family, show people the world through my eyes and so much more. Being able to travel is definitely one of the greatest benefits.

My wife and I leave tomorrow for vacation in Spain. I will be photographing as we go to Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid. I plan on having a show at the studio (with some great Sangria) sometime in the late summer or early fall. Watch for details.

One of my goals is to make people wish they were there when they look at my photos. I couple years ago my wife and I traveled to Italy and I did my best to capture the essence of that amazing country (you can see a few of my favorites below). I'm hoping to do the same with Spain. Watch this space for Spain photos in the coming weeks.

Real Estate Photography

I photograph a combination of commercial and residential listings. Many times listing agents & owners question the value of hiring a quality photographer to come in and photograph a property. My goal in this blog entry is to show what I do and why it can be so valuable to selling the property. I'll show the difference in value between the standard four options for photographing a building. I'll be focusing on residential for the sake of simplicity.

Option 1) A real estate agent or owner chooses to take images on their own. Interiors are lit by the flash on the camera or shot with available light if it is a bright room and not much thought given to composition to make a room look the best. Exteriors are photographed while the agent is there taking pictures. Usually without consideration given to time of day and direction of sunlight. Here are some samples from an actual listing for a $837,000 house that I found online.


Option 2) A photographer is hired that comes in with a tripod and a digital camera and shoots available light photos of the space. Some consideration is given to composition, but the room is very rarely arranged to make the best photo. Everything is still shot with available light. This causes windows, light fixtures and lamps to be blown out and not be very visually appealing. Exteriors are usually shot without consideration given to time of day. Very little time, if any is given to post-production to make the image look its best. These photographers are usually hired for anywhere from $75 to $150 per listing. Because of this they are shooting multiple listings in a day and running from job to job. Here are some samples from an actual listing for a $830,000 house that I found online.



Option 3) A photographer is hired to come in with some lighting (1-2 lights), a tripod, a digital SLR camera and usually an assistant. Listings take about one to one and half hours to photograph. The room is set up and organized to make the space look its best. Exteriors are photographed based on the time of day and the direction of sunlight to get the best lit photos of the facade of the building. After the photos have been taken, another 5-10 minutes of work is put into each photo in post-production to make it look its best. The cost for the photographer and assistant usually ranges from $250-$500 per listing. These are listings that I shot that range from $500,000 to $1.5 million.


Option 4) A photographer is hired to come in with a full lighting set up (4-8 lights), a tripod, a digital SLR camera and an assistant. Listings take four to eight hours depending on desired photos. All rooms are set up and fully lit. Exteriors are shot at the perfect time of day on multiple sides of the building (if shooting for eight hours). "Money shots", such as dawn or dusk can be taken of interiors and/or exteriors. After the photos have been taken, another 15-30 minutes of work is put into each photo in post-production to make it look its best. The cost for the photographer and assistant usually ranges from $500-$1000 for four hours and $1000-$2000 for eight hours. These images are also from homes that I have photographed.

Now let's look at the cost of the investment in photography.

The estimated monthly payment on a $837,000 home (from above) that had 20% down and a 6% interest rate is over $4,500 (including taxes and insurance). Let's assume that the home has been owned for 10 years, so at this point a little over $4,000/month is going towards interest, taxes and insurance. Spending money on quality photography could quickly be recouped if it helps the home sell just a week or 2 earlier.

For the agent, the sooner a property sells, the quicker they can deposit the money and spend time on other properties and their own marketing. Another major bonus for the agent is the higher quality photos have a great use for the agent to show the quality of homes that they sell in their marketing pieces.

All the listings that I photograph fall in the category of options 3 and 4. See more of my work at www.mccoryjamesphotography.com

Satellite Room

One of my shoots last week wasn't your typical architecture job. I photographed the interiors of a Ball Aerospace building for H+L Architecture & GH Phipps Construction this past week. The room will be used to build a 3-4 BILLION dollar satellite!

The space is over 40 feet tall and is a clean room to limit the amount of dust and particulates that can interfere with the satellite's components. You first put on a "rabbit suit" and enter through an air shower that blows all the dust off. There are large semi-clean anterooms to clean equipment off before it is brought into the room.

Here are a couple images of the space.


The room with two "models" to give a sense of scale.


The air shower used to blow off all dust.