Architectural Photographer | Russell Abraham
  1700 Webster
  Taronga House
  Spring Rd Residence
  Amara
  340 Fremont Apartments
  Danville House
  Orinda Residence
  Golden Gate Rec Center
  SFO Airport FireHouse3
  Palo Alto Fire Station No. 3
  Santa Clara Square
  The Orchards at Walnut Creek
  Bair Island Marina
  Tahoe Family Retreat
  Willow Glen Colonial Revival
  Santa Lucia Preserve Residence
  Telegraph Hill House
  Hillsborough Colonial
  Pac Heights House
  Alameda Home
  Portola Valley Home
  Sinbad Creek
  Hilldale House
  Politzer Drive
  Los Gatos Home
  One Henry Adams
  Nobu Hotel Miami Beach
  Chateau Tivoli
  California Pizza Kitchen
  The Alise
  COMO Shambhala Estate
  Silicon Valley Courtyard by Marriott
  W San Francisco
  Il Fornaio Restaurant
  Hotel Griffon
  The Progress
  ARMA Museum and Resort
  Francis Ford Coppola Winery
  The Bristol Hotel
  The Orchard Garden Hotel
  Food
  Furniture

Blog

Early morning at Bair Island, near Redwood City, CA.
Early morning at Bair Island, near Redwood City, CA.

2020, What a Year!

OK, we are all taking a deep breath. Most of us managed to dodge a bullet. None of our immediate family got the virus. Only one of my kids lost his job and he is doing fine. We collectively managed to displace the Orange Fool in the White House, even though he is still screaming he does not want to leave. The economy looked like it was going to collapse in the spring and then managed to hang in there. I saw my retirement funds get chopped by 30% and then manage a decent gain by the end of 2020.

The new Palo Alto Fire Station No. 3. Shah Kawasaki Architects.
The new Palo Alto Fire Station No. 3. Shah Kawasaki Architects.

This is not to say some of us didn't take a beating. Many of our favorite restaurants and music venues are gone. We have lost close to 370,000 souls through ignorance and stupidity. Calling COVID-19 a "Democrat Hoax" was just about the most stupid thing any leader could say. Infectious Disease doesn't have a party affiliation. COVID-19 doesn't care if you are rich or poor, or live in the city or the country. It is just looking for the next host. Praise be given to all the public health officials, doctors and nurses, ambulance drivers and medical assistants that have shepherded us through this medieval horror. They are true heroes all. Hopefully as a society, we can learn a lesson from this pandemic and be better prepared for the next one.

Residents at Madison Park Apartments senior housing. Development by EBALDC.
Residents at Madison Park Apartments senior housing. Development by EBALDC.

Oddly enough, we were engaged in a broad variety of projects over the year that touched on a wide range of creative endeavors. In no special order we shot houses grand and small. We photographed a lot of spaces dedicated to the very poor, the very rich, and those who someday might be rich. We shot some of the gritty side of Oakland and a bustling, restored, historic 19th Century downtown that was inspirational. We photographed towers of glass from Silicon Valley to the Central Valley and public buildings that anchored in the past. Kristen and I set about learning some new skills that we could offer to our clients. We put together the tools and learned how to create 360° virtual tours. Click on this link to see the results.

With the expert help of our partner, Eric Sahlin, we also did some time-lapse imaging of construction progress. Click here to view the video. Working with Eric and Arlen, our other drone pilot, we did a lot of drone imaging for a broad spectrum of clients. The image quality on drones has gotten dramatically better in the last few years. Who knew that shooting images from 75 ft. aloft was a great way to look at a building?

Stone Valley Middle School in Danville, CA. HKIT Architects.
Stone Valley Middle School in Danville, CA. HKIT Architects.
HVAC installation by Silicon Valley Mechanical.
HVAC installation by Silicon Valley Mechanical.

In an unpredictable way, both Kristen and I managed to thrive in a very difficult work environment. We both miss doing things we love. We have gone from sit down meals in our favorite restaurants to take-out. Regular trips to the gym have been replaced to long weekend walks with my wife. Live concerts have disappeared. My regular art group has become a zoom meeting in Barcelona. Kristen is bristling to get back to the swing dance scene. We can only hope that everyone wears a mask, listens to public health officials, and gets vaccinated. Life will return to normal soon if everyone plays by the rules and uses some common sense.

Crescent Village Apartment Homes in San Jose, CA. Irvine Co Apartment Communities.
Crescent Village Apartment Homes in San Jose, CA. Irvine Co Apartment Communities.
Athens Administrators office, Concord, CA. ODS Architects.
Athens Administrators office, Concord, CA. ODS Architects.
BLM mural in Oakland's Chinatown district.
BLM mural in Oakland's Chinatown district.

Glass Artist John Lewis's home in Oakland.
Glass Artist John Lewis's home in Oakland.

Thinking Small

Yes, we do photograph large architectural projects around the region for a variety of architects, designers, and developers. We also have a soft spot in our hearts for start-up design firms and individuals doing interesting work. This past fall we completed three interesting jobs you might like to see.


The Margarido Dr. Remodel for Alward Construction

This is the home of noted Glass Artist John Lewis. His medium is large cast glass sculptures used in mostly grand architectural tableaus. In this instance, Lewis brought his brought his glass artistry into his home. With the help of architect Jerri Holan and the skillful craftsmanship of Alward Construction, he used his cast glass creations as countertops, door insets, and lighting fixtures. Holan opened up the boxy 40's hillside house, expanded the kitchen, added a new dining room and completely changed the flow of the house. The 42" front door and side lights have inch and one half thick sculpted glass insets. On a sunny day, the house is filled with dappled patterns of filtered light radiating through thick glass windows.


Ty Karges Home

Ty Karges is a young woman starting a new home staging business. Her first project is her own house. Home staging is a complex business that requires great resources and an ability to jump through hoops at a moment's notice. It also involves good taste. Karges has more than her share of the latter. From shopping at high end suppliers to finding handcrafted accessories on Etsy, Ty is always on the lookout for something unique. Spending half a Saturday creating images that would become the backbone of her website was a fun experience. Ty was a gracious host and her sense of good taste was exhibited in every accessory and piece of furniture.


Coast Mastering

Michael Romansky is the brains behind Coast Mastering, a post production music studio tucked away in a quiet Berkeley neighborhood. Michael is the invisible savant behind much of the pop music you hear coming out of all your devices. Michael is the sound engineer who puts all the musical pieces together for the final rendition of a broad range of music. His work runs from Mozart to Alicia Keys to Too $hort. His hidden away studio is an audio masterpiece. The minute I walked in the room I knew I was in a "dead space," one that was acoustically neutral. Giant Focal Stella Utopia EM Evo speakers dominated the room with a central mixing command consul and more blinking indicator lights and VU meters than you can count. Clients often stop by to listen in. His lighting system is designed to change room color to match the music. He played an Alicia Keys song he was producing. I dared to touch the volume control. There were 16 speakers in the room with a different instrument emanating from each one with Key's voice booming from the massive ones in front of me. Alicia never sounded so good.


Grand Hyatt at SFO
Grand Hyatt at SFO.

Looking Up

Thirty years ago, most high-rises were sheathed in concrete panels with pop-in windows. Fiberglass reinforced concrete (GFRC) was an innovation for this building technology because it rendered a much lighter panel. Lighter buildings mean lighter structures, seismically safer, and less expensive buildings. Some buildings had aluminum panels and medium sized windows, but there was always a design tradeoff. And that was heat loss and gain. The greenhouse effect in buildings has been know for a long time. When sunlight shines through a window, the heat forming wavelengths want to stay on the inside. This is great on a cold day in winter, but not so great on a summer day when the thermometer is marching to the century mark.

Architectural glass makers have understood the problem of heat transmission for decades. They have finally done something about it creating a low-e glass that has greatly increased the material's ability to insulate and stop heat creating infrared light from entering a space. These recent technological gains have transformed high-rise design. Did I mention glass is much lighter than GFRC panels? Today, high-rise structures of thin, post-tensioned concrete plates and sleek floor to ceiling low-e glass panels set in thin aluminum frames are the new norm. One client of ours, Hydro, is the world's largest manufacturer of extruded aluminum. In a city like San Francisco, the added benefit is often killer views.

For most of this year we have been working with Architectural Glass & Aluminum, one of the leading suppliers of architectural glass panels on the west coast, documenting their numerous projects up and down California. From courthouses to condo towers, the design style has been the same, the sleek, dark wall of glass with its aluminum framing. Architects use a variety of design techniques to modulate the surface and sometimes articulate structure, not to mention imagination. But the basic premise holds: building technology has finally caught up with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Bauhaus concept of glass boxes reaching to the skies.

500 Folsom St, San Francisco. Designed by SOM Architects
500 Folsom St, San Francisco. Designed by SOM Architects.

Coping with COVID-19

The people here in northern California are so law abiding. Even folks down the street sitting outside at a well frequented watering hole are wearing masks. The president is right, "It will just go away like magic," but not nearly as soon as he wishes. One to two years out might be a more realistic timeline. In the meantime, we are practicing good hygiene and safe practices in our daily business life to insure we all stay safe and healthy. Mask wearing, social distancing and hand washing are the norm in the studio and on location. I am encouraged that the infection rate here is on a downward trajectory. Let us keep it that way until most of us have gotten vaccinated.

Mural at 8th and Webster in Oakland's Chinatown district.
Mural at 8th and Webster in Oakland's Chinatown district.

Finding Art in the Ashes in Oakland

Oakland always seems to be on the cusp of a revival. The old Sears store was converted into tech workspace for Square after Uber declined the invitation. So was Bruener's and a handful of other landmark buildings from the 1920s. But the pandemic and subsequent urban upheavals have left a lot of street level retail with boarded up windows and unhappy tenants. Surprisingly, a small army of artists have emerged to create handsome, politically active art on the new blank canvases that line Oakland's main boulevards. My wife Candice and I took a walk down its major streets one Sunday afternoon and found a lot to like. Some murals were crude, but many were done with a skillful hand and told a painful but hopeful message.

We ran into an artist, Matt Hunter, actively painting a series of murals of Black cultural heroes at 17th and Broadway. He told us that he was interested in painting the portraits of local folks, like the filmmaker Boots Riley, who are not fully appreciated here in their hometown.

In Chinatown we found lots of dragons and phoenixes and small queues of people lined up for take out bowls of Pho and spring rolls. On 9th St, loud R&B bounced off the walls of surrounding Old Town from a night club turned into an outdoor drinking establishment filled with people of all races. It may be a while longer before we can recover from this pandemic, but the vitality the local artists show in these murals will hopefully become a harbinger of a brighter future for this and every city.


A 360° Virtual Tours Adventure

360° virtual tours have been around for a long time. We have shied away from them because they had a vertigo-inducing quality. But recently, because of the issues of the pandemic, a few of our residential multi-family clients have asked us to take another look. We did. And now I can say we have the ability to create a realistic visual walkthrough that will not leave you seasick.

Creating a 360° tour from 2D files is akin to constructing a globe from the inside out. Each piece of the globe's surface is a photograph of a room that is fitted into the spherical projection, stitched together as one large and strangely distorted Jpeg and then projected through a software player as a global view of the room. There are several hurdles to jump through to create a 360, including rotating the camera on the lens' optical axis, compensating for great exposure variances, and stitching in floor and ceilings in a seamless way. The end result, if done correctly is a movie-like experience.

The other alternative to 360 2D is a 360 3D experience that is created with a stereo-360 camera. The brand name for this proprietary 3D application is Matterport. These folks use gaming technology to create laser models of a space or a whole building and then paint in 3D photos of each room. Rather than being at a stationary point and viewing a space, the Matterport tour lets you walk through the space as if you were in a 3D movie. Matterport can also create a floor plan and an orthographic projection of the room.

HVAC Equipment being lifted to the 10th story rooftop.
HVAC Equipment being lifted to the 10th story rooftop.

Looking Up

Usually when we are asked to photograph a project, we often arrive just as the painters and landscapers are finishing. Sometimes they are still working on the job as we are shooting. Occasionally we get to actually don hard hats, safety vests and glasses to shoot a project that is under construction. This past winter we shot two high rise projects in Silicon Valley for construction companies. These assignments were an interesting break from shooting completed buildings. On one of the projects we brought along our video partner, Eric Sahlin, who spent 8 hours shooting a time-lapse video that he telescoped into two minutes. Not only was it fun photographing dozens of highly trained construction workers perform complex tasks with effortless precision, for a day we got to document that process. Here is a quick sampler of two days, ten and fourteen stories up, ankle-deep in wet concrete.

Brokaw Rd
The project for Silicon Valley Mechanical was particularly challenging since we began ten stories up on the roof documenting the installation of a complex HVAC system in the pouring rain. Due to the announcement of the Shelter-in-Place ordered to take effect that night, the driven SVM crew completed 95% of this project in a single day, instead of the two days originally planned. Keeping ourselves and our gear dry while trying not to get wacked by huge chillers and pipes swinging overhead was an exercise in nimbleness. We documented SVM's installation of approximately 1,800 linear feet of pipe over ten prefabricated picks, twelve steel beams for AHU isolation, two 3-piece AHUs, six fans, a 27,000 pound combination skid, two 360-ton chillers, and fifteen or so large sectioned pieces of ductwork.


MIRO
MIRO is a high-rise mixed-use residential project in downtown San Jose designed by Steinberg Architects. The development will be two 28-story towers when completed, making it the tallest residential building in San Jose. We were hired by Suffolk Construction to help update their portfolio of high-rise residential structures. Sited directly across the street from San Jose's new city hall, the building will have spectacular views of the city and the surrounding mountains. We were fortunate to be able to document the concrete pour of one floor from the second tower where form-work prep was being completed. Sometime early next year San Jose will have another 630 living units in the heart of the city.


COVID-19 Lessons

It became screamingly obvious to me and most thinking people that we had a problem on our hands back in March. Reading about a choir where 65% of the members became infected from a two-hour practice in a church hall convinced me that this was one highly contagious virus. This was the "black swan" event that epidemiologists had been warning about for years. It is clear that this is a disease transmitted by breathing other peoples' air in confined spaces. One does not get this disease from dirty toilet seats or taking a leisurely jog in the park. A person gets it from breathing contaminated air in an enclosed space. As much as we enjoy warming a barstool in our favorite pub or dining in a banquet in our cozy corner ethnic eatery, we are going to have to postpone those pleasures to preserve our public health. The science behind controlling these infectious diseases has been around a long time. A quarantine is something the Italians figured out in the 15th Century to control the Plague. Unfortunately, the lessons learned from the last pandemic that ravaged the world 100 years ago seem to have been forgotten by some Americans. I think it is time to let the scientists call the shots on this pandemic and have the politicians take a back seat. As for the anti-mask crowd, their warped vision of freedom is a threat to everyone. They should be ticketed the same way if you run a stop sign. Short of a vaccine, the only way we are going to stop this menace is by using some common sense and listening to the scientists who have been studying this for a generation.

Police maintaining order as pedestrians wait. San Francisco, 1972.
Police maintaining order as pedestrians wait. San Francisco, 1972.

Déjà Vu, All Over Again

Somewhere in high school I stopped saying the pledge of allegiance. I was OK with everything except the "One nation under God" part. In a civil society where one could worship any god from Krishna to Allah to Jesus, what did god have to do with pledging allegiance? But the line I really did like was "with liberty and justice for all." That made the most sense to me. That was the glue that kept us all together as a nation: the idea that we all had the same rights and the same access to justice. That is the simple reason that brown folks are risking their lives to cross our southern border. It is that basic desire for freedom and justice. To live in a place where they can be treated fairly and not summarily hauled off to jail and never seen again because they said something a crooked government official didn't like. Whether your name ends in a -berg, a -ski or -i or -shin, your ancestors came here so they could live their lives in justice and peace. Unless, of course, if you are black. Our fellow African-American citizens have the unique distinction of being the only people brought here in chains to serve our economic system. Slavery has been the original sin of this society for 400 years and continues to be a stain on our collective psyche. I don't need to recount the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow for you to understand that liberty and justice is not easily found among the ranks of our black citizens. Over 7000 mostly black people lynched in our country between 1876 and 1940 should be testament enough of our failure of providing "liberty and justice for all."

I am old enough to have lived through a similar time of social unrest, the 1960s. In my senior year at U.C. Berkeley, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated in the span of four months and most black neighborhoods in America were left in ashes. Hundreds of people died from "police violence."

I marched and photographed many demonstrations in the Bay Area from the late 1960s into the 1970s. They were all different. Many were peaceful, some not so. Most of the time, the police did their job and behaved themselves. Sometimes they responded with gratuitous violence, like the time I watched a phalanx of CHP in downtown Oakland attack a group of people waiting for a bus several blocks from the actual demonstration. They clearly were not the college kids who had come to demonstrate. They were just middle-aged people on their way to work. They were all badly injured. With the baton-swinging CHP just feet from my head, I did not stay to see the fate of those injured passengers.

These days I watch tens of thousands of people marching for justice in cities big and small across the nation, just as we did in the 1960s. Then, Richard Nixon ran on a "Law and Order" platform that barely edged him into the presidency in 1968. Today, it seems that "Clorox Don" wants to resurrect that mantra and have a repeat performance. With all due respect to the cleansing power of Clorox, I think this time will be different. What sane American can argue against: "Liberty and Justice for All"?  To quote Martin Luther King, Jr., "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  For the sake of our nation, we can only hope this time he is right.


Homeowner Breeze Braunschweig and her companion Bayou, a Catahoula Leopard Dog, the state dog of Louisiana.

Two Houses Out of the Ordinary

Late last year we were asked by Alward Construction to photograph a very unique house in the Berkeley Hills. The house is the creation of Breeze Braunschweig, a woman of various careers, interests, and expressions. The original house was a two-story hillside number with a somewhat predictable Spanish revival façade. Working with Alward and architects Leger and Wanaselja, Braunschweig expanded the footprint both horizontally and vertically with decks off each level and an in-law unit on the newly discovered ground floor.

Breeze is a collector and every corner of her house contains some curated artifact from the last century. Almost every door and fixture is recycled. She spends about half her time in New Orleans working and remodeling another house in the Marigny District. She owns an old pick up truck which she fills with objects and carefully ferrys them from the deep south to her Berkeley home. Breeze stumbled over a wing from a Cessna Skymaster and figured out a way to use it as an awning on her upper floor deck. Here is a house in the Berkeley hills both eclectically grounded in the past century and ready to take off.


A month or so ago, Sylvia Kwan, principal in the San Francisco office of DLR Group / Kwan Henmi, asked me to shoot their house in Kentfield.  She and her architect/partner husband, Denis Henmi, built the house a few years back and I had photographed it then. They had just done a small remodel and wanted me to take some portraits of the both of them for a local magazine spread.  The quarantine regime had just started and we all made a conscious effort to keep our six foot distance.

The house was basically a tear down build-over on a large wooded site in beautiful Marin County very close to the College of Marin. Denis and Sylvia created a classic mid-century modern house with large open spaces that seamlessly connected with the outdoors. Denis is Japanese American, which informs his approach to the surfaces, fixtures, and volumes of the house in a subtle and tasteful way. The house is filled with both contemporary American art and classic Asian pieces. Sylvia and Denis have built a long and successful career designing both large multi-family projects as well as large scale transportation ones. Experiencing their personal space was a refreshing relief from their commercial and civic work.


Opening a Time Capsule

Being stuck at home during this quarantine has afforded me the opportunity to finally get to those scores of projects around the house that always get stuck into the "mañana" bin. At my dear wife's admonition, we tackled the basement this week. She retrieved a tattered box labeled "Old Letters." Opening the box was like entering a time capsule. It was chock full of correspondence from my college years and my days of living abroad in the early 1970s. Letters from family, friends and the draft board. ;Notices of college acceptance and scholarships given. The letters are very typical from college kids of the era, filled with angst, alienation, longing, and desire. The letters also are revealing documents of peoples' lives during one of the most unsettled times in our modern history. With many cities in the flames of racial strife and many of my cohorts being coerced to fight an ugly war of conquest, people were still able to express both love and hope. Some of the letters documented the literal hand to hand combat going on in the streets of college towns like Berkeley. Others, from a distant girlfriend, expressed the longing of one's touch. People of my generation expressed themselves in words on paper. Sheets of onion skin carefully stuffed into blue envelopes with red white and blue chevroned edges. People sent poems or long quotes from Chinese philosophers to each other as a matter of course! Almost all the letters are hand-written in beautiful script showing a discipline long lost. Expressing one's closest feelings on paper to a friend or lover seems to have fallen victim to our hyper tech society. Text messages and Twitter have become our replacement communication media. Hopefully the warmth and intimacy found on these almost ancient sheets of onion skin paper will find a way to be part our tech communications of the 21th century.


Old Oakland: Living History

Leland Stanford may have driven in the last spike on the Central Pacific Railroad in Promontory, Utah in 1869, but the transcontinental railroad ended on Seventh St. in downtown Oakland. And so, almost overnight, a commercial district grew up to service arriving travelers from the East. Those buildings, originally hotels and retail shops, are still standing and represent the largest intact collection of period Victorian commercial buildings on the west coast. Many of the buildings have unique cast iron facades and large plate glass windows, all very modern in 1875.

Although in continual use since the 1870s the area was long neglected, and buildings decayed. In the 1990s, the firm of Storek & Storek bought the properties and did major restoration work. The current owner, 11 West Properties has continued to restore and improve the properties. Today, Old Oakland is an active mix of boutique retail, restaurants and office space. The second and third stories of each building are occupied by tech companies, non-profits and internet start-ups. ThredUp, Blue Bottle, and Y-Combinator are tenants.

From top: ThredUp, Blue Bottle, Y-Combinator.

Last month we were asked by Eastdil to spend a couple of days to photograph the entire area including the robust social life and weekly farmers market. What we saw on the street was delightful. What we saw inside was amazing. It is almost a miracle that this slice of architectural history has been able to survive, be rediscovered and reused in the middle of a vibrant city. Old Oakland seems to be a place where the 19th Century and the 21st Century can live hand in hand.


Our Own Server

After years of using subscription services for FTP delivery, we finally initiated our own server. It works quite well and has a UPS backup. It is a RAID based array of large and reliable hard drives linked to a very fast commercial grade internet connection. ;Now when you receive a link from us, the downloading process will take a few minutes rather than a few hours. That should make everyone happy.


Sometimes looking backward can be fun. Knowing where we have been often helps us know where we want to go. So we took a quick look and the teens and came up with a retrospective format where we would pick out one interesting project from each year and try to find something timeless, if not beautiful about each one. I am divided up this retrospective into two newsletters, denominated by years. Let's continue with with 2015.

2015: Hotel Grace, San Francisco, Michael Stanton Architects

San Francisco has been a destination for people since 1849 all looking for their own pot of gold. Visitors do need a place to sleep and the city's hoteliers have been only too happy to offer one. Surrounding Union Square are a phalanx of big name five star establishments with legendary names and storied histories. This need to provide a home for the less well heeled traveler has been part of the city's business since it was first a city. Enter Stay Pineapple, a Seattle based boutique hotel group that wanted to join the long list of hotel entrepreneurs desiring a piece of the local small hotel market. Hotel Grace became their first entry into the Bay Area market. The hotel's origins date back to the post earthquake building boom a century ago. The new owners wanted to take a 1 ½ star place and move it up to a 4 star one. Stanton Architects reworked the old building from top to bottom, but put most of their energy on the ground floor remodel. Their efforts yielded a pleasant blend of Beaux-Arts grace with modern design touches.

Hotel Grace, San Francisco, Michael Stanton Architects
Hotel Grace, San Francisco, Michael Stanton Architects

2016: Bali Guest Houses, Bali, Indonesia by Alejandra Cisneros

We don't get to travel internationally too often, but when we do, it is usually very rewarding. In 2016 we were contacted by an American ex-pat, Alejandra Cisneros, running a small design firm in Bali who was interested in having her residential projects photographed for a monograph of her work. Her work is, to say the least, quite exceptional. She finds historic 18th and 19th Century houses from the island of Java, disassembles them, brings them to the island of Bali and creates a new house from the parts. The end result is an amazing blend of historic Polynesian design and Modern precepts. Many, but not all, of her clients are ex-pats from Europe and Australia who wanted to enjoy the beauty of the Balinese lifestyle. We spent close to a month there soaking in South Pacific Island culture. A remarkable experience.

Bali Guest Houses by Alejandra Cisneros
Bali Guest Houses by Alejandra Cisneros
Bali Guest Houses by Alejandra Cisneros
Bali Guest Houses by Alejandra Cisneros

2017: Santa Clara Square, The Irvine Company and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Palo Alto Farm House, FG Architects

Santa Clara Square by the Irvine Company is one of the largest multi-use building projects in Silicon Valley. It consists of 8 mid-rise office buildings, 1500 units of apartments and a large retail complex. Built over a period of 4 years, we have been fortunate enough to be able to photograph it in each of its phases. The project is still being built and we are continuing to photograph its various parts as they are completed. Working around the Live, Work, Play concept, SCS can be an almost self contained urban city with a city. The Irvine Company has done an amazing job designing this urban center for the South Bay. Once upon a time, there were farms in Palo Alto. I know, Palo Alto is the heart of Silicon Valley and any farms left would be peoples' vegetable gardens. But architecture is often historic and people often want to reference it to remind them of times past.

Fergus Garber Architects of Palo Alto are masters of blending the historic with the modern. Palo Alto, like many cities in the Bay Area is very much interested in preserving its traditional middle America college town look with strong design restrictions on new buildings. FGA managed to thread the needle with this project creating a completely livable modern house with a "farm house" feel.

Santa Clara Square, The Irvine Company and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
Santa Clara Square, The Irvine Company and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners

Palo Alto Farm House, FG Architects
Palo Alto Farm House, FG Architects
Palo Alto Farm House, FG Architects

2018: Two Modern houses by Swatt | Miers, Fletcher Hardoin

Swatt | Miers have been clients of ours for many years. Their work keeps getting better. In 2018 we managed to shoot three houses for them, all in the modernist vein that they do so well. The Amara house is just the latest example of what the firm can do when they have a client with a singular taste and deep enough pockets to follow through on the original design concept.

Fletcher Hardoin is one of the leading architectural firms on the Central Coast. Their work is divided between luxury hospitality design and custom houses. Dan Fletcher worked with Jorie Clark Design to create a wonderful butterfly design house in the Santa Lucia Preserve. The house sits on one of the prettiest parts of the Preserve and offers a sense of serenity, elegance and beauty for the owners.

Amara House, by Swatt | Miers Architects
Amara House, by Swatt | Miers Architects
Amara House, by Swatt | Miers Architects

Santa Lucia Preserve Residence, Fletcher Hardoin Architects. Interiors By Jorie Clark Design.
Santa Lucia Preserve Residence, Fletcher Hardoin Architects. Interiors By Jorie Clark Design.

2019: Capitol 650 and Fourth Street East by KTGY Architects

It was hard to pick one multi-family project to feature from 2019 since we probably shot ten of them, but two stood out because of their scale and prominence as landmarks in newly emerging neighborhoods. Luxury apartment development is alive and well all around the Bay and we have photographed a fair amount of them in the last few years. We have also photographed below market rate and senior housing in a surprising number in the same time frame. No one design firm has a corner on this market, but our good friends at KTGY are major participants. We picked two of the five projects we have worked on with them in the last year or so.

Capitol 650 sits on a former cabbage patch in soon to be beautiful Milpitas, just steps away from the latest BART station. This large multi-level project has apartments and ground level town homes designed for families.

Fourth Street East just finished in 2019 and is a massive two building complex in the Jack London Square neighborhood. Designed to fit in with the existing waterfront warehouses the buildings feature brick facades and corrugated metal cladding reflecting the ubiquitous shipping containers at the port just blocks away.

Capitol 650 by KTGY Architecture + Planning
Capitol 650 by KTGY Architecture + Planning

Fourth Street East, by KTGY Architecture + Planning
Fourth Street East, by KTGY Architecture + Planning

Sometimes looking backward can be fun. Knowing where we have been often helps us know where we want to go. So we took a quick look and the teens and came up with a retrospective format where we would pick out one interesting project from each year and try to find something timeless, if not beautiful about each one. I am dividing up this retrospective into two newsletters, denominated by years. Let's start with 2010.


2010: Good Shepherd Catholic Church, Elk Grove, CA - HGA Architects

HGA expanded from its upper mid-western origins to California in a big way. They opened up four offices in Northern and Southern California in the oughts and started doing a lot of higher education and religious work. Of the many projects we photographed for them, Good Shepherd Catholic Church in a suburb of Sacramento was one of the most interesting. With curvilinear lines reminiscent of Notre Dame du Haut, this stunning gem of a church building is a surprise find in the central valley's often dull suburban sprawl.


2011: Two modern houses - Robert Swatt, Wm. David Martin

In 2011 I was in the middle of developing a survey book for Images Publishing of Melbourne and as a result, shooting a lot of houses around the U.S. Two great houses, one in the rugged East Bay hills of the Bay Area and the other on the edge of the Carmel River stand out. The Sinbad Creek house, by Robert Swatt, F.A.I.A. stands out for its simplicity of line and beautiful integration into the hillside environment.

The other, by Wm. David Martin, built on the edge of the Carmel River in Central California, is laid out along the lines of a classic Spanish hacienda with an enclosed courtyard and circular orientation. Both are dramatically modern yet very different in their approach.

Sinbad Creek House. Architect Robert Swatt
Sinbad Creek House. Architect Robert Swatt. Interior Design: Jorie Clark

Carmel House. Architect Wm. David Martin
Carmel House. Architect Wm. David Martin

2012: Martinez Commons student housing, Berkeley - EHDD and Behnisch Architekten

Just down the street from the notorious "People's Park" in Berkeley EHDD created a wonderful multi-functional student housing and services community center. Neo-Brutalism has certainly been part of EHDD's vocabulary, but in Martinez raw concrete gives way to wood, glass and metal design elements that are used to create a striking contemporary look. Berkeley Student Housing Services originally hired the German firm, Behnisch Architekten, but later called in EHDD to take over the overpriced and unbuildable design. The site was the home of the old Anna Head School which left in the 1970s and is slowly being absorbed into the Berkeley campus. Ironically, a year later, we ended up shooting the new Anna Head School (now known as Head Royce School) for Malick Architects in the Oakland hills.

Maximino Martinez Commons. EHDD Architecture.
Maximino Martinez Commons. EHDD Architecture.

2013: Scottsdale House and LA Valley College - Will Bruder Architect, Steinberg Architects

Working on another book project, I got the opportunity to work with Will Bruder in Phoenix, AZ photographing a house he did for a local family. Bruder is something of the heir apparent to a long line of princely architect outsiders starting with Frank Wright, that have made the Sonoran Desert home. Bruder's list of amazing award winning buildings is significant, but he still does houses. This Scottsdale house nestled in a hillside suburban site offers up surprise and delight at every turn.

Steinberg Architects in Los Angeles does a lot of academic and institutional work in the region. Their remake of the entrance and main plaza of LA Valley College is a tasteful effort to give a dramatic sense of place to an understated community college in the San Fernando Valley. The folded plate metal canopies offer both shade and a sense of place to the utilitarian administration buildings they are attached to.

Scottsdale House by Will Bruder, Architect.

LA Valley College. Architect: Steinberg Hart.

2014: Pelican Point House, Carmel Highlands - Eric Miller Architects

Big Sur has a special place in California's cultural and literary past. In the 1950s it was discovered by the beats, then hippies and later, New Age types who made it their home or their place away from home. Think Alan Ginsburg, Gary Snyder, Henry Miller, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Jack Kerouac. A generation or so earlier writers like Steinbeck and Robinson Jeffers lived or wrote about the place. Dramatic stone cliffs that jut into a swirling surf below offer some of the most breathtaking tableaus in North America. Here on a cliff overlooking Point Lobos, Eric Miller was able to create a dreamscape house with unparalleled views and jaw dropping beauty. And we were lucky enough to spend some time there photographing it.

Next month we will finish the decade review with five more spectacular, architecturally interesting projects that we have been fortunate enough to be part of. We would love to be part of your designs in the 2020s. Just click on the link and let us know what you need us to do: ra@russellabraham.com.

Pelican Point House by Eric Miller Architects.
Pelican Point House by Eric Miller Architects.

Abraham & Paulin Photography
The bustling Las Ramblas pedestrian street in Barcelona, Spain.

Looking for a Sense of Community

We have the good fortune to photograph all kinds of spaces, from the homes of the ultra-wealthy to shelters for the disadvantaged. With each job we gain a small sense of who we are and a bit of thankfulness for our station. It is especially rewarding to work for architects who have been tasked with building a sense of community in their work. Some projects are overtly community based, like community centers and public squares. Others are more subtle uses of private space for public use. In each instance, the concept of people sharing space and coming together for some common purpose is the central theme.

Europeans may have had their differences and certainly much blood has been spilled gratuitously in the name of this king or that religion, but over the centuries, their compact cities have provided a us with a remarkable blueprint for public space. My wife Candice and I spent several weeks in Spain this past spring soaking in the urban textures of its most noteworthy cities. Las Ramblas in Barcelona or La Plaza Mayor in Madrid should not be replicated here, but we can learn from their vitality and adaptability. As we rethink our urban fabric, providing spaces for people to congregate, dine, and live will be a primary task. Here is just a quick look at some community oriented spaces we have photographed over the past year.


The Oshman Family JCC Taube Koret Campus for Jewish Life in Palo Alto.
The Oshman Family JCC Taube Koret Campus for Jewish Life in Palo Alto.

Palo Alto JCC

The Oshman Family Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto was designed by Steinberg Architects ten years ago. They asked us to photograph a community celebration this past summer. The JCC sits on a large site, the former home of Sun Micro Systems in south Palo Alto. In addition to serving a large Jewish community on the Peninsula, it also houses a low-income housing unit, a senior living facility, sports fields, a daycare center and two swimming pools. Almost half of the members are not Jewish and a Christian church uses one of their meeting halls on Sunday. Jews, Christians and Asians happily use all the JCC's well-appointed facilities. It truly is a private space dedicated to a public good.


Rotary Terrace, South San Francisco

Rotary Terrace is a mid-sized senior-housing facility in the heart of South San Francisco. The project was designed by HKIT Architects and was developed by the Rotary Club and Human Good, a housing non-profit. Rotary Terrace is an independent living facility for moderate-income seniors. Almost all the residents living there were thrilled to have the opportunity to live in a safe, clean, well-run facility in the heart of the Bay Area. Many of the residents had middle class lives until medical bills or supporting a sick spouse wiped them out financially. Rotary Terrace has become a safe haven for these residents.


ZO Apartments, Oakland

ZO is a recently completed high-rise apartment building in the middle of downtown Oakland. The project, developed by Gerding Edlen and designed by Perkins and Will, is one of a dozen new multifamily luxury high-rises that are quickly changing the core city. Like many of its cousins, it has smallish units complemented by expansive common spaces and decks on the podium level. Giving residents lots of room to hang out or make their home office is the trend in multi-family rental housing. ZO takes this theme one step further. The building has an open air "living room" on the ground level that is open to residents and the public. From 9 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon anyone can take a seat on a comfy couch in this public / private space and take respite from the busy street just steps away. Now if they could just add a pop-up coffee bar . . .


The Charles Porter Golden Gate Recreation Center

The Charles Porter Golden Gate Recreation Center in north Oakland is a new facility replacing a decades old one. Designed by Shah Kawasaki Architects, the center serves a large minority community with sports and educational programs. There are classrooms for after school programs and a small stage and dance studio for local performing groups. Facilities like these can be the life blood of working-class neighborhoods like north Oakland. I can remember spending many hours of a lazy summer in my youth at the local Rec Center learning pottery and taking art classes.


Photography by Abraham & Paulin Photography
ZO at 1700 Webster St, Oakland. Developer: Gerding Edlen. Architect: Perkins and Will.

The Quickly Changing Skyline of Oakland

Developers lined up in 2015 to beat a rise in the per unit development fee for new projects in Oakland. As a result, close to a dozen new high and mid-rise buildings are in the process of being built or completed in downtown Oakland. We had the good fortune of photographing one of the first projects to be completed in this phase of development. Gerding Edlen, a nationwide real estate investment and development firm, commissioned the high-profile Perkins and Will to design their 23-story tower on 17th and Webster in the heart of downtown. This apartment project is Gerding Edlens most ambitious project in the Bay Area to-date and breaks some new ground for Perkins and Will as well. Unique to your typical high-rise multi-family developments, the Perkins and Will team, led by Ming Ming Ong, added some attractive design features that make the building stand out on a street lined with colorful tile facades from an earlier era.

ZO, the new name for the building, sits squarely on Webster St., but its main entrance is on 17th. A substantial parking garage sits under the podium level and is wrapped in a folded, perforated metal screen of powder coated triangles interrupted by vertical panels of colored glass.  The building's entrance is marked by a shiny brushed aluminum canopy that rises to the 5th floor podium and becomes a covered enclosed seating area on the deck level. This four-story high enclosure yields a dramatic and sculptural element to the streetscape.The Perkins and Will designers use some simple but effective tricks to break up the glass slab look on the main tower by using walls of white concrete cut into discrete sections by bands of slate gray and white end caps. The effect is to create a stacked box look with window wall inserts.

At street level is a large, well appointed lobby with a huge garage door that is left open most days. Residents or people from the neighborhood can come sit in the comfortable lobby with its garden, sculpture wall and easy access to 17th street undisturbed. The building oozes with amenities, like a place to wash your dog, store your bike, have a party with one hundred of your closest friends, or chill out by the rooftop pool. Downtown Oakland has been in the urban dumpster for a generation. With ZO and its soon to be finished cousins, that is about to change.


Getting Married

One of the most fun things about being a photographer is not knowing where the next assignment is coming from. That is not to say that every e-mail is an offer to sail off to photograph a luxury resort in the South Pacific, but sometimes the calls just pull us out of our rut. Last month we got a call from a wedding planning company who wanted us to photograph a few of their wedding venues. Wow, who would have thought that there was an entire slice of the hospitality trade that did ONLY weddings! Wedgewood Weddings is the number one provider of turn-key weddings in the U.S. They can get you everything you need except a spouse. Our role in this assignment was to photograph two of their NorCal venues. The founders, John & Linda Zaruka, are real-estate visionaries who saw attractive, under-used meeting spaces, often private golf clubs and historic houses as a perfect venue for their wedding company. John and Linda seasonally leased the properties, brought them up to code, gave them a facelift, and created a venue. A prospective couple need only select the champagne and write the check. Wedgewood does everything else.

Wedgewood Weddings San Ramon venue.
Wedgewood Weddings San Ramon venue.

Jefferson Street Mansion, Benicia, CA
Jefferson Street Mansion, Benicia, CA.

Of the two places we photographed, the Jefferson Street Mansion at the old Armory in Benicia was wonderful. Originally an officer's quarters in the 19th Century, this historic house was completely decorated in period Victorian elegance when Wedgewood got there. They thinned out the furniture, added an outdoor chapel, dining room, and bar to complete the arrangement. From April to the end of October, the space is available to any prospective couple. Sitting on a bluff overlooking the Carquinez Strait, what a perfect place to tie the knot. If only the rest of married life could be that easy.


Chase Center Area, SF. Photography by Abraham & Paulin Photography
The new Chase Center arena in Mission Bay, San Francisco.

A New Landmark For Mission Bay

It must have been the grease pencil sitting on the architect's desk, with its helical strips of paper peeling away to reveal its core that inspired the building envelope of San Francisco's new Chase Center Arena. Designed by MANICA Architecture of Kansas City, the Chase Center sits prominently on San Francisco's forgotten south waterfront. Wrapped in 20-foot-high curved ribbons of powder-coated steel, the arena makes a dramatic architectural statement that redefines this once industrial and nautical section of town.

The building's architecture is quite beautiful. Its front on Third St., and rear facing the bay, are both elegant and inviting. The helical ribbon design is exciting and keeps the building from overpowering the site. The building has two office towers that frame a large plaza that face Third Street. Getting thousands of fans or concert goers to and fro can present a problem, however.  SF Muni, Caltrain, and the ferry system will need to work overtime to bring guests to the front door.

I was always a fan of the Warriors' old Oakland home because of its architectural simplicity and structural cleverness. SOM hit a home run when they designed the Oakland Coliseum and Arena in the 1960s. The buildings did a great job of housing all three of Oakland's ball-sport teams. But times have changed, and spectator sports have become very big business. Sports team ownership has moved from rich eccentric individuals to corporate conglomerates that demand solo sport venues and upscale viewing accommodations. With the exception of the Cow Palace, San Francisco has never had an arena for either large sporting events or concerts. When major rock groups came to town, it was either Oakland's Oracle Arena or San Jose's SAP Arena that hosted them. Now San Francisco has a home for both. It will be interesting to see if the Chase Arena becomes a good neighbor to this newest part of the City, or just a traffic nuisance. It could be one more piece in the puzzle of transforming both Mission Bay and the Dogpatch neighborhoods.


Ocean View and Mountain Top Elegance in Carmel-by-the-Sea

I first discovered Carmel-by-the-Sea when I was a student at Berkeley many years ago. Its rustic cottages and windy roads bordered by a magnificent beach were compellingly beautiful. I am not the only one who has found Carmel magnetic. People from around the world often end up here, even if only for a brief visit. Both Pebble Beach and the Santa Lucia Preserve have the same zip code as Carmel and share much of the same oneness of living in paradise. Recently, we had the good fortune to photograph two houses, one at the beach and one on top of the mountain, that share a similar modernist theme.

Sea Glass by Eric Miller Architects

Sea Glass is a modernist home with a dramatic floor to ceiling open view of the Pacific just across narrow Scenic Drive. Architect Eric Miller has gone from a traditionalist to a modernist in the last dozen or so years creating a series of dramatic oceanside houses in the Monterey area. Building along the ocean on one of the most coveted stretches of real estate on the West Coast is always a challenge. Miller uses a few architectural tricks to reduce building height and expand views on a very tight lot.

Walls of glass are smartly juxtaposed against split faced limestone blocks for dramatic effect.  Working with an open floorplan and using below grade space to create additional rooms, Miller has created a large comfortable weekend home for a Bay Area couple.


Taronga by Holdren + Lietzke Architecture

The Santa Lucia Preserve, located next to Carmel Valley on the central coast, is an amazing place. Originally, it was the 20,000 acre ranch of a wealthy New York family. It was sold about twenty years ago and is slowly being developed into 300 home sites. This is not your average suburban development. The minimum acreage for each site is five acres with some being as large as 40. We were fortunate enough to be commissioned by Holdren + Lietzke Architecture to photograph their latest house in the Preserve, called Taronga, an Aboriginal word meaning beautiful view.

At 2100 feet in elevation, this is the highest point along this section of the Coastal Range. The views from every window are amazing; distant ocean views on one side and a sweeping valley and mountain range on the other. Architect Craig Holdren captures this breathtaking panorama with a 12' high window wall that rolls away on warm sunny days. Something the central coast has a lot of. A wall of split faced limestone starts in the garden, defines the entry and becomes the primary wall in the expansive living room. Deep shed roof overhangs help control mid-summer heat gain. The house has a breeze-way that connects the main house to the guest house and provides a protected outdoor seating area complete with its own fireplace. The owners, a retired executive and his educator wife love the solitude and natural beauty of the place.


Capitol 650 Apartments in Milpitas, by KTGY Architecture + Planning.
Capitol 650 Apartments in Milpitas, by KTGY Architecture + Planning.

Rethinking Cities Big and Small

It's no secret that more people want to live in the San Francisco Bay Area than there is space for. While certain people in Washington brag about how basic industry is returning to the Heartland, (U.S. Steel added 500 workers nationwide last year) Silicon Valley and its many constituents are booming in exponential fashion. Facebook alone is in the process of adding 10,000 workers with Google and other tech giants following suit. The region's seven counties are projected to add about two million more people in the next ten years. That is an eye popping 28% population growth. All those folks are going to need a place to live. This need hasn't been lost on developers or cities as they rezone underused brown sites and leftover properties to spur large scale multi-family development. Here is a look at three we recently photographed.


Fourth Street East, Oakland

The architectural firm KTGY based in Irvine, California has a large hand in multi-family development in the Bay Area. We have photographed three projects for them in the last year with another five or six in the pipeline. Fourth Street East is a two building, seven-story project that occupies a somewhat forgotten corner of the Jack London Square waterfront. Inspired by the nearby port and railways, the design resembles stacked shipping containers and the landscaping is bordered by train tracks. Using every inch of square footage, this large project sports all kinds of upscale amenities for its residents. The trend is to build minimal apartments that are surrounded by luxurious common spaces. A large gym, game rooms, meeting spaces, a big pool and an executive kitchen are all part of the package. Even with nosebleed rents, this place is filling up quickly.


Elan, Mountain View

Seidel Architects has had an active hand the multi-family housing market for many years. In the 1990's we shot large-scale, garden apartments for them. Today, the scale and quality of their work has improved. The projects are outward rather than inward looking, trying to recreate an urban feel of a streetscape found in an eastern U.S. city in the early 20th Century. Elan sits on the edge of downtown Mountain View next to El Camino Real. The large L shaped development replaces a strip mall and a handful of service-oriented retail shops. Some of the old shops were restored and new ones added. The El Camino Real side of the property is a five-story apartment block with first floor retail. The more residential Castro Street side is a townhouse format, replicating a streetscape one could find in an older east coast city. A parking structure is tucked behind the buildings and a quaint urban street with shops and outdoor tables runs through the middle of it.


Capitol 650 | SoMont, Milpitas

Capitol 650 and SoMont are two other multi-family KTGY projects built back to back, right next to the south bay's newest transit hub, the soon to open Milpitas BART station. Capitol 650 is a large five-story apartment block that faces busy streets and the elevated VTA light rail line. SoMont, the two-story, townhouse-like condos are placed behind on the quieter side. As with other projects on this scale, the apartment side is loaded with common space amenities from game lofts to meeting rooms. The apartment buildings facing the streets have deep setbacks with lushly landscaped green strips that provide both a mini-strip park for the neighborhood and some sound insulation for the residents.


Taking Our Backup System Up a Notch

After years of relying on a JBOD backup array, we finally installed a NAS system with a RAID array. While not totally bulletproof, this NAS server will dramatically improve our fail-safe archive and backup system. A RAID system (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a technique that paints files over four different disks in a redundant fashion, so nothing is lost if one disk fails. Our potential for data loss has been reduced to almost zero. Another benefit of the NAS is we now have our own addressable in-house server. Going forward, we will be able to deliver zipped files to you directly from our server at a much faster speed.


Bliss Dance By Marco Cochrane.

Las Vegas, a Shining Light in the Desert

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."   -- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Ever since noted Jewish gangster Bugsy Siegel teamed up with the Italian Mafia in 1945 to turn a hot, dusty rail junction in the middle of the Mojave into the world's fantasy gambling mecca, Las Vegas has become one of America's iconic cities. Las Vegas is one of the few places in America that people have a hard time being neutral about. There is either much loathing or loving of the place. Las Vegas is a physical symbol of America's darkest characters and its brightest lights. Founded by gangsters and sustained by vice, avarice and venality, its "Sin City" moniker has more than a ring of truth to it. Yet its appeal is almost universal. After all, it is the one place where most Americans can go to have fun.

Personally, I think of Las Vegas as an urban design process that is continually expanding and evolving, possibly even for the better. From a design perspective, it has gone from the ugly, to kitsch, to the sublime. While entertainment, both legitimate and not, is the backbone of the economy, the city is flexing its muscles in interesting ways. The gambling and entertainment themes have added sports and convention venues. Las Vegas is now the third most visited city in the U.S. You can easily hear ten different languages on a stroll down the strip. From Muslim women wrapped head to toe in plus 100-degree heat to teenagers flashing more skin than any dermatologist would permit, the Strip is one of the most robust promenades in America. Restaurants and bars open onto the broad boulevard while foot bridges raise you over the bustling dessert streets. A few steps from the Strip one can find either cavernous casinos or very well-appointed luxury hotels and restaurants where a Wagyu steak dinner can run you something north of $500.

I ended up in Las Vegas a few weeks ago ostensibly to attend the annual A.I.A. Convention and Expo. I went as press, to exercise my editorial skills and take an anecdotal temperature of the town. I love conventions for two reasons, 1. Everyone is on their best behavior. Even when they don't want to be, they are gracious. 2. The wealth of information and eye candy in amazing. It is literally impossible to absorb all the offerings from floor exhibits to lectures. I wish I had a week, but I didn't. I am not a licensed architect and do not need to accrue CEUs, so I did not go to the lectures on "Optimizing Wall Panel Performance" or "Sound Absorbing Ceiling Tiles," but I attended a variety of floor lectures on urban design and multi-family housing innovations. I also talked with architects, dozens of product manufacturers and old friends from Cal Alumni to my publishing industry contacts. If you have never been, the amount of effort some manufacturers put into exhibit design is breathtaking. Window panels 12 feet high, real burning fireplaces, built in place concrete block walls, mockups of exterior cementitious paneling 10 feet high. All this so 10,000 architects could be awed. But after all, isnt what this is what Las Vegas is all about, to leave us all starstruck so that we can come back for more?

Terracotta panels on display.

Amara House by Swatt | Miers Architects.

Architects and Interior Designers Working Together

The rivalries between architects and interior designers are legendary. It is almost a "women from Venus, men from Mars" type of dichotomy. Yet, in the world of residential design, they often have no choice but to collaborate. Architects and Interior Designers have distinct and separate jobs and do see the world in different ways. They can and do work together, often creating compelling work. Here are three projects we recently photographed where residential architecture and design are woven together.

Amara House

Robert Swatt of Swatt | Miers Architects is a mid-Century modernist who has a pension for the spare look. No, Marie Kondo is not a staff member, but she would feel right at home in his studio. Their mid-Peninsula Amara house has all the trademarks of Richard Neutra or Pierre Koenig seemingly plucked straight from the Palm Springs desert. Swatt chose his in-house interiors person, Connie Wong to fill in the space between the walls. Wong responded with a subdued palette of grays and whites adding warmth with rich mahogany wood accents. Because of height restrictions, the house has a full livable basement that contains many useful functions, from home gym to sauna to TV and game room for their children. The family's informal lifestyle dictated no dining room. Instead that space has become the "homework room" for the kids.


Perez House

Interior designer Jodi Tisdale of Pacifica was tasked with giving an upscale spec house in a hidden corner of Pacifica a major face lift.  The house was built with a traditional look and the clients chose not to stray too far from that. They also had a serious collection of one of a kind handcrafted furniture that they wanted to feature. Tisdale started the job and then realized that there were too many structural changes to the property for her to execute. She called in architect James Vaccaro who lent his expertise in building structure and engineering so that she could complete the project. Walls were moved, a staircase rebuilt, a kitchen completely redone and whole sections of the downstairs repurposed. In the end, the couple, who had just sent their last child off to college, had a new house to enjoy for the rest of their days.


Lafayette House

Michelle Moore is an interior designer who lives and works in the Lamorinda area of the East Bay. She was asked by a couple in the leafy suburb of Lafayette to redo their forty-year-old merchant-built home. Working with architect Peter Golze, she transformed major living spaces, expanded and modernized the kitchen, master bath and master bedroom suite. The Asian-American clients leaned toward a Japanese esthetic and Moore responded in kind with furniture and finishes worthy of any modernist. Since her building changes were not structural, her contractor was able to get permits from her drawings. In this instance, Moore wore both hats, interior and architectural designer. Once again, a soft palette of neutral colors and furniture fixtures with clean lines and a Bauhaus look blended seamlessly into her Asian inspired theme.


Getting Out of Town

It has been decades since my wife and I have been to Europe. Having a couple of flight credits from a cancelled job we decided to take the plunge and do a grand tour of Spain. As Americans, we may read all kinds of disturbing stories in the news about Europe, but they are actually doing just fine. Their streets are cleaner than ours, there is much less obvious poverty, the citizenry is well shod and well fed, and people generally seem happy. From Gaudí's wonderful Barcelona creations, to the treasures of the Prado Museum in Madrid to the hill towns of Cádiz, to the Alhambra in Granada, we soaked in as much Spanish heritage as we could in two weeks. Here is just a small taste of our travels.

Above: Ronda, Spain.
Below: (clockwise from top left) Gaudí-designed Casa Milá apartments; Sagrada Família church by Gaudí; View of Granada from Alhambra; Alhambra palace & fortress at dusk; flowered doorway in Graziella.

The Football Players (1900) by Douglas Tilden.
The Football Players (1900) by Douglas Tilden.

"Win One for the Gipper"

I hate to admit it, but Ronald Reagan's autograph is on my diploma from U.C. Berkeley. The sheepskin has been hanging in my studio for all these many years.  Seems like the "Gipper" was governor when I was an undergrad at Cal. In case you don't remember, it was the 1940's football movie Knute Rockne, All American about the dying football player played by Reagan that catapulted him to Hollywood stardom. That slogan kept running through my head when I got an email from a photo agency in London to shoot a university campus here in the Bay Area. The assignment went from very vague to very specific and was for a U.S. based advertising agency doing a marketing campaign for a study abroad program aimed at Asians and Europeans. And, of course, the university just happened to be my alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley. I guess this was one for "the Gipper."

In some ways, the Berkeley campus has not changed much in the years since I was a student. But the student body has grown significantly and the tenor of the place seems much more serious than when I was there in the '60s and '70s. The stately John Galen Howard Beaux-Arts Classical Revival halls are still there, now interspersed with more modern structures and a clever integration of landscape and building design. The campus lives in a tight 1200 acre quadrant with almost every square foot of land spoken for. Ronald Reagan sent in the national guard to put down student rebellions and Donald Trump has scolded anti-right wing protestors, but the university has prevailed and prospered as one of the nation's premier institutions. It was a unique and fun assignment.


Adapting the Past for the World of Tech

110 Sutter was being built when the 1906 Earthquake hit. It was one of the very few buildings in the city's downtown that survived. The building was originally the offices for the French Savings Bank. The vaults are still downstairs. In its modern-day iteration, it is home to a series of tech start-ups. M.J. Moore Construction hired us to photograph some of the restoration and adaptive reuse work on the building. The painted wall in the "breakout room" is part of the original sign that was once an exterior wall of the building. It was uncovered when a stucco facade was removed in the remodel.  His group restored the mosaic tiled floors and integrated them with the concrete ones.

San Francisco is percolating with creative space reuse and has been since EHDD redid the Cannery almost 50 years ago. It is encouraging to see that building tradition being carried forward.

The old French Savings Bank at 110 Sutter St, San Francisco.

Photo by Eric Sahlin.
Photo by Eric Sahlin.
The View From Above

Some of the most exciting views of San Francisco can be seen at about five hundred feet at dusk. A major real estate trust asked us recently to get a shot of the city at "blue hour" with their building featured in the foreground. We summoned our UAV (drone) pilot, Eric Sahlin, and set out on a mission that was as much a Photoshop exercise as it was a shooting one.

The shot needed ample room in the sky because it was to be used in print for an annual report cover. We also needed a high quality image for offset reproduction. Our plan was to take multiple shots from the same stationary location and stitch them together in Photoshop, thereby creating a seamless vertical single image. We have done that before with some success, but what we couldn't anticipate was the intense wind at 500 feet which almost scratched the mission. Our pilot was forced to use a very high ISO to get a stable series of shots that we could work with. Back at the studio Kristen Paulin stitched the images together in a very convincing way, but we then had to deal with the unacceptably coarse grain caused by the high ISO. Digital sensors are generally good to about 800 ISO. Above that, you are taking your chances with grain and noise. Using a third party software and some very sophisticated and seldom used grain reduction techniques, Kristen was able to save the day on a very tricky shoot.


Aging Gracefully

As life expectancy has increased, experts say that accepting changes and finding meaningful activities are paramount to staying happy and healthy in our golden years. Modern medicine and people paying more attention to their personal habits, like smoking and drinking, has stretched the average person's life span in unexpected ways. In the last few months we have been fortunate to photograph three facilities to provide housing for the elderly: one assisted care and two non-profit, low-income independent living. All these facilities provide an essential need, providing safe and supportive housing for our parents or grandparents.

The Trousdale senior living community in Burlingame, CA.
The Trousdale senior living community in Burlingame, CA.

The Trousdale is the result of a public-private partnership in Burlingame. Designed by SmithGroup architects, it is an assisted living development that has the look and amenity of a four-star hotel. A hair salon, a movie theater, and a massage studio are just some of its features. Each of the units are small studios with kitchenettes. The building has two dining rooms and a café on the ground floor with public access. This market rate facility seems to be designed to pamper seniors in their later years.


Life's Garden in Sunnyvale is an independent living facility built around a two acre open space that provides a green oasis in an otherwise increasingly urbanized South Bay environment. HKIT Architects, working with Beacon Development Group did an extensive remodel on this existing community of over two hundred residents. Life's Garden is a low income facility designed for independent seniors. This facility actively engages its residents in a variety of programs that serve much of its ethnic diversity. It was clear chatting with residents that they were all very happy to live in a safe and nurturing environment.

Life's Garden, Sunnyvale, CA.
Life's Garden, Sunnyvale, CA.

Whittier Fire, evening of July 13, 2017. Photo by Glenn Beltz.
Whittier Fire, evening of July 13, 2017. Photo by Glenn Beltz.
California Is Burning

Anyone who has been in California for more than ten minutes understands that the landscape gets greener as you rise in elevation. In most cases, the desirable neighborhoods are the ones with Hills, as in Beverly, attached to them. The reason is simple. They are greener. As winter storms roll in off the Pacific, they rise in elevation and just drop more precipitation on the higher elevations turning them into green zones of vegetation in an otherwise semi-arid landscape. I happen to live on one of those hills, a lush, wooded hillside environment where my human neighbors are far outnumbered by pine, oak and redwood trees. But there is a downside to living in "Paradise" both literally and figuratively, as many Californians have painfully discovered over the last few years. The winter rains usually end around April 1 and don't resume until the middle of November. That is seven months of dryness; enough to turn most woodlands into tinderboxes. Any ignition source can turn one of these green zones into an inferno with deadly consequences. The horrific Oakland Hills Fire of 1991 burned within a mile or so of our house. We were very lucky to have been spared.

1991 Oakland Hills firestorm.
1991 Oakland Hills firestorm
1991 Oakland Hills firestorm.

There are three questions here. 1., Can we design a safer house by using better materials and technologies? 2., As the climate incrementally warms and the summers get hotter and longer, can we mitigate our natural environment so that it does not become a mortal threat? 3., How can urban planning help communities like Santa Rosa and Paradise rebuild in a more defensive way?

To answer these tough questions, I turned to two architects who lived through the Santa Rosa Tubbs fire of 2017 and have had an important hand in the rebuilding of that community.

Photo by Keith Allen Moore.
Photo by Keith Allen Moore.

The first is Warren Hedgpeth, a lifelong Santa Rosa resident, past president of the regional A.I.A. chapter and currently involved in rebuilding a number of homes and businesses in the Fountain Grove neighborhood. Hedgpeth is a forward thinking architect, always reaching for innovative solutions to everyday building problems. As an example, the last project we shot for him was a three story 50 unit apartment block in downtown Santa Rosa, constructed entirely of modular units. The Tubbs fire burned within a few blocks of Hedgpeth's house and left many of his neighbors homeless. They are struggling to recover, he says, even after receiving substantial insurance payouts. Many people see rebuilding as too much of a struggle and have resigned themselves to move on.

Building a fireproof house is almost impossible, says Hedgpeth, but there are several things that an architect can do that will greatly increase a structure's fire resistance. Cal Fire has created a new set of codes called the Wildland Urban Interface Codes which require both fire resistant materials for the exteriors and elimination of places where fires can start, like exposed eaves and deck overhangs. That, and a brush free perimeter around the house will give the structure a fighting chance. Fire resistant cementitious paint, ventless attics, fire resistant glass, fusible link shutters on glazing are all part of the fire-resistant equation. Hedgpeth noted that while the blue collar Coffee Park subdivision is well on its way, the more exclusive Fountain Grove is struggling to come back.


The second authority I spoke with is Julia Donoho, A.I.A., Esq. Donoho is both an architect and an attorney. She is also chairwoman of the A.I.A. Firestorm Recovery Committee. Helping people rebuild their communities has been a full-time job for her since the Tubbs fire, which took just three hours to burn 12 miles, destroy over 5600 structures and kill 22 people. Donoho's approach has been on many fronts, from streamlining the permit process to studying the ebb and flow of heat in firestorms, to looking at more efficient ways of building fire-resistant structures. A firestorm is different than a basic wildfire in that it creates its own wind system from the intense heat. This phenomenon can lead to very strange weather effects.

Donoho told me some startling things that most people don't think about: 1., Houses and structures aggravate a fire because they burn so hot they add excessive heat to it. 2., If heat from a fire could flow around or through the structure, it could sometimes be saved. 3., Heat flows in patterns much like water and wind. If we could understand it better, we could build structures where the heat from a fire could flow around a building rather than consume it, much like the air around a moving car. Donoho is also vice president of a construction company that is focused on finding new technologies to build cost effective new structures in the burn zones. Her biggest adversary right now are the insurance companies that are using outdated formulas to compensate homeowners. It is relatively easy for a medium sized contractor to say, rebuild fifty homes in a subdivision like Coffee Park, but much more difficult to rebuild one offs in more exclusive Fountain Grove. "All insurance companies are not the same," she said. "Consumers need to know what they are buying."

More of us are living in the Wildland Urban Interface. We love the beauty of the place but may not fully understand its risks. Warren Hedgpeth told me of experiencing the Hanley fire in 1964 that burned over the hills to the edge of Santa Rosa. Its pattern was almost identical to the Tubbs fire 55 years later. The primary difference was the fact that in 1964 the fire consumed woodland and ranchland. In 2017 the Tubbs fire burned homes and shopping centers. There are no easy ways to stop wildland fires. Rakes don't work, POTUS. But building smarter more fire-resistant buildings and creating defensible space around them seem like our best short-term alternatives.


Harper Crossing in Berkeley, by Steve Kodama.
Harper Crossing in Berkeley, by Steve Kodama.
Shelter for Those Who Need It Most

Everyone, with the exception of those holding 30 year mortgages on houses they bought years ago, complains about the cost of housing in the Bay Area. And their gripes are real. The explosion of market rate housing prices and significant population increases has put pressure on the entire housing market. The rapid appreciation of real estate values in marginal neighborhoods in places like Oakland is in no small part a contributor to the tent cities that are populating freeway underpasses all around the town. There are a handful of non-profits working with corporate sponsors, institutions and pension funds trying to at least roof over the heads of the working poor. Last month we had the good fortune of photographing three below-market-rate housing projects in some unlikely places for architectural firms with a long history of working in this sector. The results were gratifying.


Kodama Diseño Architects: Harper Crossing, Berkeley

Located in south Berkeley, just a block from the Ashby BART station, Harper Crossing is a high density affordable senior citizen housing complex that provides numerous amenities to its residents. The U-shaped four-story structure surrounds a green courtyard with its own vegetable garden maintained by residents. Despite the busy location, the inwardly facing units offer a quiet relief from street noise and traffic. The ground floor has meeting rooms and a common area that can be used for classes or private gatherings. Kodama's use of pitched roofs and mixed wood and stucco siding are informed by the craftsman prairie bungalows that dot the surrounding residential neighborhood. Architect Steve Kodama has been working in the affordable housing arena for many years and is one of our oldest clients.


Mithun Solomon and HKIT Architects: 1515 Riviera, Walnut Creek.
HKIT Architects: 1738 Riviera, Walnut Creek.

For the casual observer Walnut Creek is a sleepy sprawling suburb with an unusually large office and retail presence near its BART station. Walnut Creek does sprawl eastward to the foothills of Mount Diablo, but the city has an extremely vibrant core filled with restaurants and a large open-air mall with unique shops that make it the urban focal point of the East Bay. Because of its strategic location, Walnut Creek has been aggressively urbanizing its downtown by adding high density market rate housing at a breakneck clip. The one thing missing was affordable housing.

Taking advantage of a low-income housing tax credit program, the city of Walnut Creek decided to build housing for working low income families. They selected two sites just north of the BART station that were leftovers from the last office building boom of the 1980s. The developer they selected, Resources for Community Development, hired HKIT and Mithun Solomon to create two high density buildings for working families.

1515 Riviera by Mithun Solomon and HKIT Architects

HKIT and Mithun Solomon had to work with less than ideal sites. The 1515 Riviera Ave site is sandwiched between two busy streets and a fast food parking lot. Mithun designed the 1515 building to follow the curve of Riviera Ave.  They punctuated this arc with dramatic triangular sunshades giving it a cheese grater like facade. The building's residents represent a broad range of ethnicities that are part of the fabric of a growing diversity in the East Bay.


The 1738 site sits hard and fast next to a very busy, elevated ten-lane freeway and a feeder street for the BART station. On the freeway side of the building, HKIT used a single loaded corridor design with a double wall insulation to separate noise. They placed decorative bays and triangular sunshades on the freeway side to create visual interest for motorists at 60 mph. On the street side, HKIT designed a large community room that opens onto a podium level courtyard with play area. Both buildings are designed for larger families with the majority of apartments being two or three bedroom units. These small steps by forward thinking cities will not solve all of our housing problems, but they are steps in the right direction.

1738 Riviera by HKIT Architects.

Getting Ink

This month, our photos were featured in Gentry HOME magazine for Swatt | Miers's project, a residence in Atherton.  Pick up a printed copy or view the story online.

Atherton residence by Swatt | Miers Architects, on the Jan/Feb cover of Gentry HOME

Retrospect Vineyards, Windsor, CA, by Swatt | Miers Architects.
Retrospect Vineyards, Windsor, CA, by Swatt | Miers Architects.
People In Architectural Photography

Somewhere on my bookshelf of architectural classics is a volume on Pierre Koenig, that prince of Mid-Century modernists based in Los Angeles. His Case Study houses 21 and 22 became the benchmark for residential modernism in the 1950s and 60s. C.S.H. 22, the Stahl house, was photographed by the legendary Julius Shulman in 1958 for Life Magazine. Shulman, always the showman, hired some sorority girls from U.S.C. to show up in prom dresses for the shoot. He carefully positioned them in the dramatic cantilevered living room and shot the house at night with the young women prominently animating the glass box house. He could have taken the same shot without people, but Shulman understood that modern architecture was minimalist and looked better with them than without.

Since the 1950s, the debate has raged on about whether an architectural shot looks better with or without people. There are valid arguments on both sides, but the trend has been to at least add a few folks to show scale and activity. Sometimes, a few scale figures can turn into a crowd which can distract from the original intent of the image. Digital imaging, with smaller sensors and quicker shutter speeds offer more opportunities to get people into architectural shots. In this newsletter, we feature three recent assignments where people played either a minor or major role in defining the space.


Swordplay: the West Berkeley Fencing Club

This tired, former auto repair shop, just off San Pablo Ave. in Berkeley, was given new life with the help of Alward Construction who transformed the property into a lively Fencing studio for kids and adults. The structure was seismically strengthened, lighting and flooring upgraded and casework for fencing gear added. It was a simple remodel and Keith Alward decided that the best way to show the space to have it full of fencers. That happens most afternoons when kids, fifth through twelfth grade fill the hall with épées and energy. We decided to go with a combination of strobe, daylight and dragged shutter speeds to have some swordsmen still while others a blur of action.

West Berkeley Fencing Club by Alward Construction.
West Berkeley Fencing Club by Alward Construction.
West Berkeley Fencing Club

Anton Menlo Apartments

KTGY is a large So.Cal based architectural firm with offices and projects around the country. They have a significant presence here in the Bay Area with a number of multi-family projects either completed or under construction. We recently completed a large multi-family project just up the road from Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park called Anton Menlo. The marketing manager we worked with urged us to include people in most shots whenever we could. In this situation, there were no hired models or good looking staff we could rely on. We just had to recruit people on the fly. It was clearly too cold to get anyone by the pool, but we found people using most of the common spaces on the property. We got the approval and cooperation of every person we shot. Their presence added a subtle human touch that is often missing from your traditional architectural shot.

Anton Menlo by KTGY Architecture & Planning.
Anton Menlo by KTGY Architecture & Planning.
Anton Menlo by KTGY Architecture & Planning

Roofstock Offices

Roofstock is an internet site for residential real estate investors. They occupy the fourth floor of the historic Breuners Bldg. in downtown Oakland. JRDV, an international architectural firm based in Oakland did the space planning on the project. As with many shoots involving tech companies, both the tenants and the architects wanted photos filled with happy workers. We decided to shoot on a Friday afternoon and a Saturday morning so that we could limit the flow of employees, but not interrupt their work day. We lit most of the spaces with lots of strobe and managed to keep a fairly large cohort of workers in place late on a Friday afternoon. The company's HR coordinator was quite helpful in orchestrating our model flow. The center of the space is a large circular seating area they dubbed "The Agora." We managed to fill it up on a Friday afternoon with a large pizza bribe. Both clients loved it.

Roofstock office in Oakland, CA, by JRDV Architects.
Roofstock office in Oakland, CA, by JRDV Architects.
Peopling spaces doesn't always work. Sometimes the people can distract from the architecture. People often date a photo. The swing dresses worn by Shulman's models went out of style shortly after the shot was taken. Today they look antique, but the house doesn't. That being said, the discrete use of people in architectural shots can create a warmth and sense of humanity that no amount of lighting can ever accomplish.
Hospitality Photographer near Silicon Valley CA
Nobu Hotel, Miami Beach.
Hospitality Spaces

Photographing hotels, restaurants, and resorts has always been a key component of what we do. People who work in the hospitality trade are always a great group of people to work with. They are almost always solicitous and resourceful. Often hospitality spaces are aspirational and even fanciful. Abraham & Paulin have shot a series of hospitality spaces this year that are imaginative and fun.


Nobu Hotel Miami Beach

The 1960s saw a major expansion of Hotels on Miami Beach. Many of the architects were sun baked modernists who created mid-century modern resorts with a decorative Latin flair. The Fontainebleau and Eden Roc were two such upscale resorts designed by Morris Lapidus. About five years ago, Nobu Hotels bought half of Eden Roc and turned it into Nobu Hotel, Miami Beach. They hired the Rockwell Group to give this mid-century classic an elegant makeover. As part of a 48 hours in Miami Beach travel story for Gentry DESTINATIONS Magazine, we got to camp out and photograph this classic hotel. Nobu spent a serious sum of money remodeling all the guest rooms and public spaces, giving each a delicate, Japanese touch without ignoring the dramatic 50's architecture. It was definitely worth the trip.

Hospitality Photographer near Silicon Valley CA
Nobu Hotel, Miami Beach.
Hospitality Photographer near Lake Tahoe CA
Hospitality Photographer near Napa CA
Hospitality Photographer near Sonoma CA
Hospitality Photographer near Sacramento CA

The Orchard Garden Hotel

One of the nicest things about working with hotels is that most change their look every five years. And then they need to update their photography. This was the case with the Orchard Garden Hotel on Bush St. in San Francisco. This understated four-star gem sandwiched between the financial district and Chinatown is a favorite for business travelers. We got to spend a few days this summer shooting this and its sister hotel just up Bush St. The hotel has lots of natural maple finishes and a sleek modern feel to most of its spaces. There are roof top terraces that look over downtown and offer a cozy spot for small gatherings.

Architectural Photographers Russell Abraham & Kristen Paulin
Guestroom at The Orchard Garden Hotel, San Francisco
San Francisco Architectural Photographers Russell Abraham & Kristen Paulin
San Francisco Architectural Photographers Russell Abraham & Kristen Paulin
San Francisco Architectural Photographers Russell Abraham & Kristen Paulin

Veggie Grill

Veggie Grill is not a completely new concept, but its vegetarian offerings and its phone app ordering are. They just opened a new restaurant in Berkeley and asked us to document it. Veggie Grill started in So.Cal but is slowly moving its way up the coast with five casual dining spots in the Bay Area and a few in the Northwest.  The restaurant we photographed in Berkeley represents a new service concept for them: a place where vegetarian fast food and a smartphone app come together. Order on your phone and pick it up ten minutes later. Time to trade in the Big Mac for a vegan Steakhouse Burger.

Architectural Photographers Russell Abraham & Kristen Paulin
Veggie Grill at Shattuck Square in Berkeley.
Oakland Architectural Photographers Russell Abraham & Kristen Paulin
San Francisco Architectural Photographers Russell Abraham & Kristen Paulin

Architectural Photographer near Silicon Valley CA
Willow Glen House by Bob Tobiason of Tobiason+Rook Builders and J.C. Riccoboni of RICCO STYLE Interior Design.

Press Announcement:

Abraham & Paulin were just featured in the international digital lifestyle magazine, Bontena this month. The format was a long and detailed interview about who we are and what we do. It gave us the opportunity to go into some depth about the "why and how" of what we do. Click here to take a look:

Read Interview with Russell Abraham


Residential Interiors

Shooting residential interiors and hospitality spaces has always been an integral part of our work. This past spring we were fortunate enough to shoot a variety of residential projects that spanned a wide range of styles and budgets. Each one was engaging and fun. Here is a quick sample.

Restored Georgian in San Jose

The Willow Glen House was a team effort to restore a classic Georgian home in one of San Jose's oldest neighborhoods. Bob Tobiason of Tobiason+Rook Builders teamed up with J.C. Riccoboni of RICCO STYLE Interior Design to breathe new life into this 100 year old classic. The basement was expanded to create new living spaces and guest quarters. Rooms were added and walls subtracted to create more space for the active family that lived in the house. Attention was given to restore almost all of the original hardware, interior doors and windows. The end result was a fabulous revitalization of a classic San Jose home.

Architectural Photographer near Silicon Valley CA
Willow Glen House by Bob Tobiason of Tobiason+Rook Builders and J.C. Riccoboni of RICCO STYLE Interior Design.
Architectural Photographer near Silicon Valley CA
Architectural Photographer near Silicon Valley CA

New Craftsman in Monte Sereno

Tucked away in Monte Sereno is a new home built by De Mattei Construction. Our good friend and client Risë Krag of RKI Interior Design was asked to design all the interiors. The house is a mix of Craftsman design and modern elements that give it both a familiar yet contemporary look. Krag had to create some intimate spaces in a large Great Room with exposed wooden truss ceilings and limestone walls. Krag was lucky enough to design the some of the living room furniture including the occasional chairs and the large table of petrified wood and ammonites. She used a giant 72" circular chandelier in the Great room as a unifying element. As always, Risë's understated interiors and refined palette blend well with the muted Craftsman architecture.

Architectural Photographers Russell Abraham & Kristen Paulin
Monte Sereno Home by De Mattei Construction and RKI Interior Design.
Architectural Photographers Russell Abraham & Kristen Paulin
Architectural Photographers Russell Abraham & Kristen Paulin
Architectural Photographers Russell Abraham & Kristen Paulin
Architectural Photographers Russell Abraham & Kristen Paulin

A Lavender Oasis

Nancy Boy is a brand of essential-oil based bath, body, and home products sold online and in the companys San Francisco retail store. Owners Eric Roos and Jack Richards live and work in rural Sebastopol at a country property with house, barn, and lavender fields. They asked us up about a month ago to photograph their spread, which is situated among vineyards and apple orchards and is just wonderful to see and smell. The gardens are planted with many of the same botanicals used in Nancy Boy's products. The home is cleverly decorated with a palette of whites and grays and is an inviting backdrop to classic contemporary and mid-century modern pieces.

Architectural Photographers Oakland
Home and garden of Nancy Boy owners Jack Richards and Eric Roos.
Architectural Photographers Oakland
Architectural Photographers Oakland
Architectural Photographers Oakland
Architectural Photographers Oakland
Architectural Photographers Napa Valley
Architectural Photographers Sonoma

Are You Secure? How Google's New SSL Rules Affect Your Website:

If you haven't heard, the almighty Google announced that as of July 2018, any website without an SSL certificate (the 's' in https://...) will be flagged as unsafe in the Chrome web browser. What does that mean?

Example of how an SSL-encrypted web url displays on Google Chrome browser.

Google is pushing for more website security. If a website is has the HTTPS protocol, then it is protected. In addition to a slight boost in Google ranking, the benefits to migrating to HTTPS include preventing hackers from stealing information, protecting any exchanged data from being corrupted, and guaranteeing that the website your visitors think they're viewing is, in actuality, your website. I found this page extremely helpful in breaking it down: HTTP to HTTPS: An SEO's guide to securing a website.

What you should do: Contact your website hosting company and your domain name registrar, and ask them what steps you need to do to switch to HTTPS protocol. They might have done it already or they might need you to complete some steps.

What to expect: We just made the switch last week at no cost by contacting our web host. Our site was interrupted only briefly, less than 1hr, but the main hiccup we experienced was that any link we had ever sent to our clients was now obsolete. If you've recently tried to view a project gallery on our site, and you get redirected to the landing page, contact us for the updated link. Another way around this is to right click the link > select "copy link address" > paste it into your browser > add the 's' after http > then hit return to load the url. That should get you back up and running.


Architectural Photographer near Carmel CA
The Fox House in Central California. Fletcher + Hardoin Architects. Interiors by Jorie Clark Design.
The Fox House in the Preserve

Tucked away on the expansive central California Coast is the Santa Lucia Preserve. It is an old rancho that stretches from the ocean to the edge of the Santa Lucia mountains. It is slowly being developed into estate class homes on five to forty acre parcels. As architectural styles have changed, so have the houses being built there, opening up opportunities for modernist architects and interior designers to exercise their talents. This past spring I was asked to shoot an elegant modern house by architect Dan Fletcher and interior designer Jorie Clark, two old friends. Being stuck for two days in a gorgeous house set in a stately redwood grove in the middle of nowhere was a challenge, but someone had to do it. LOL. Both Dan and Jorie are well traveled designers with years of experience. They have worked in Monterey and Carmel for decades honing their skills in residential and hospitality design. All this was on display at the Fox house in the Preserve. Floor to ceiling glass meets stone walls and Belgian oak floors. Classic modern furniture sits on handmade rugs with native American art pieces on the shelves. Quite the retreat for nature lovers.

Architectural Photographer near Carmel CA
The Fox House in Central California. Fletcher + Hardoin Architects. Interiors by Jorie Clark Design.
Architectural Photographer near Carmel CA
Architectural Photographer Los Angeles
Architectural Photographer near Carmel CA

Los Altos Retreat

As dense and urban as coastal California is, it is always amazing to me that 15 minutes from Palo Alto, one can find a mountaintop building site and have one of northern California's leading architects build a modern retreat. This couple chose Bob Swatt, F.A.I.A., to design their house up a country road in Los Altos Hills, close to Stanford where he teaches. This somewhat spartan exercise in concrete, wood and glass sits on a quiet hillside that overlooks a wooded glen and the leading edge of the Santa Cruz Range. This is not a big house with the main floor occupying most of the active public space. A spectacular selection of contemporary art hangs on the few walls in the house. Swatt is fond of exposed concrete with poured in place walls a part of almost every room.

Architectural Photographer Silicon Valley
Los Altos home by Swatt | Miers Architects.
Architectural Photographer Silicon Valley
Architectural Photographer Silicon Valley
Architectural Photographer Silicon Valley
Architectural Photographer Silicon Valley

Palo Alto Makeover

FGY are influential but under appreciated architects in Palo Alto. Their office is one of the most active residential ones on the Peninsula. This south Palo Alto remodel is a dramatic remake of a modest, merchant-built house from the 1940s. Catharine Garber, the lead architect, kept most of the shell building, but gutted it and cleverly flipped the floor plan so that the main living space faced the re-imagined back of the house. She moved the bedrooms to the front, found some extra living space in the second story gable and created a new entry on the side down a cozy walkway. Garber did all this inside a 2000 square foot floor plan. She also found a space for some of the owner's quirky sign collection.

Architectural Photographer NorCal
Palo Alto residence by FGY Architects.
Architectural Photographer NorCal
Architectural Photographer NorCal
Architectural Photographer NorCal
Architectural Photographer NorCal

Architectural Photographer SF Bay Area
Rendering of the proposed 500 Kirkham project in Oakland. Image provided by Lowney Architecture.

Located on one of downtown Oakland's prettiest commercial streets, Lowney Architects' office sits above a trendy Vietnamese restaurant and a Japanese Fried Chicken spot. A great place to work if you get hungry. Since Lowney's office was a short hop from our studio in Jack London Square, we walked over picking up a few containers of Dim Sum in Chinatown on our way to a working lunch in Ken Lowney's office.

Ken Lowney is an Oakland native who studied architecture in London and Santa Monica (SCI-Arc) before opening his eponymous shop in downtown Oakland in 2003. His first project was the renovation of a classic building on Lake Merritt. He turned a 1920s era Cadillac dealership into a Whole Foods. Since then, Lowney has built a solid reputation as being one of the East Bay's leading urban pioneers in housing and retail development. Throughout Oakland, there are dozens of major development projects under construction and Lowney's hand is on many of the most prominent ones.

Lowney Architecture
Plank Restaurant in Jack London Square. Designed by Lowney Architecture.

He is a huge fan of Oakland and sees the city as a place with tremendous growth possibilities. Oakland has many things San Francisco doesn't, like space, affordable real estate and great weather. It also has an urban and regional transit network that serves much of the Bay Area. Oakland did have a robust commercial core sixty years ago, but the construction of BART and suburbanisation in the 1960s and 1970s killed it off. Jerry Brown opened the door to urban revitalization in Oakland when he was the city's mayor in 2000 and it has kept going. This latest development cycle will bring thousands of new residents and hundreds of businesses downtown. Once thought of as a "black city," Oakland is now one of the most racially balanced urban centers in the Bay Area. Crime is way down and property values are rising.

Lowney Architecture
Safeway on College Ave in the Rockridge neighborhood.

Lowney's office does a broad range of work from historic renovation, to street level retail, to multi-family in a variety of markets, from subsidized to luxury housing. His 1261 Harrison project, when built, will be the tallest building in the East Bay. It's gigantic Y shaped 460 ft. tower will dramatically alter the downtown skyline and hopefully revitalize the adjacent Chinatown. Lowney's 1000 plus unit mixed use housing project next to the West Oakland BART station will breathe new life into a moribund neighborhood that has been scarred for decades by freeways, "urban redevelopment" and neglect. A portion of the Kirkham project is being built using modular housing technology developed by here in the Bay Area.

Architectural Photographer San Francisco
Rendering of the proposed 1265 Harrison building in Oakland. Image provided by Lowney Architecture.
Architectural Photographer San Francisco
The Orchards shopping center in Walnut Creek.

We talked about some of the ongoing problems Oakland faces, like homelessness, and what can be done about it. One quick, simple solution is to set up temp housing for homeless folks in "Tuff-Sheds," on public land, a program Lowney has actively supported and donated money to. Homelessness, in many ways, is our society's lack of caring for the mentally ill and those with drug issues. These are larger issues that need to be addressed on state and federal levels, but giving a homeless person a clean, sanitary place to stay is something that can happen locally and quickly.

Architectural Photographer San Francisco
City Slickers Farms in West Oakland.

I asked Lowney if he was a form giver or problem solver. Without hesitation he replied, "Definitely, a problem solver. Architecture is the means to serving people and not a means in itself." For Lowney urban planning and how buildings interface with the community and the environment are just as important as the buildings themselves.

In the classic noir film, the Hustler, Minnesota Fats asks Fast Eddie where hes from. Without hesitation and a little sense of irony Eddie replies, "Oakland." I think more people feel like Eddie these days.


Travel Photography, Key West, FL
View of the Key West harbor from Sunset Pier.

The southern most city in the continental U.S. is the legendary port city of Key West. A bit like San Francisco in spirit and origin, Key West was founded by adventurers working as legal scavengers rescuing sailors whose ships floundered on the shallow reefs that surround the Keys. They recovered what items of value they could from the wrecked ships. Needless to say, Key West developed a reputation as a rollicking, care-free kind of place, something it has never shaken. A small island whose core city is built out in a quaint Victorian style, it is also reminiscent of San Francisco. For the last few years I have been writing and photographing travel stories for my good pals at Gentry Destinations Magazine in Silicon Valley. One of the island's prime resorts, Ocean Key Resort & Spa, invited us down to spend a long weekend and do a story about the charms of this almost off the grid American city.

Architectural Photographer California
Architectural Photographer California
Architectural Photographer California
Architectural Photographer California

Except for the occasional hurricane, the weather is always nice, the bars close at 4AM and everyone just seems to run in first gear in this most laidback of towns. Maybe this is why K.W. was a port in the storm for so many great 20th Century American writers like Hemingway and Williams. Hemingway's home and artifacts are still here. The indoor/outdoor lifestyle flourishes, with most bars and restaurants looking more like someone's patio or backyard than a formal eatery. White washed "Stick Gothic" houses line old-town's narrow streets giving it an almost Disney like scale. In three days in Key West, we never turned on the T.V., checked our email, or paid much attention to the outside world. We just sat on the balcony and watched the sailboats silently pass by.

Architectural Photographer California
Ocean Key Resort & Spa.
Architectural Photographer California
Architectural Photographer California
Architectural Photographer San Francisco
Architectural Photographer San Francisco
Outdoor blues at Sunset Pier.
Architectural Photographer San Francisco
Sunset at Sunset Pier.

Architectural Photography Napa, CA
Suisun Valley home remodel by YAMAMAR Design.

What do you do if you are an architect and have a project that you need to photograph, but it is not DONE? There is little furniture and no art to speak of. In addition to that, the place is neither finished or cared for. We just photographed a place like that on a beautiful site in the Suisun Valley. The results were spectacular. Architect Karen Mar of YAMAMAR Design, who designed the remodel, realized her project needed some help. She rented key furniture pieces, culled artwork from home and office, and showed up on shoot day with armfuls of props. We reciprocated by bringing stacks of books and shopping bags of accessories. This simple shoot required an exceptional amount of planning and execution. Working as a team, we pulled it off.

Here are some of the before shots of the interiors we dressed up. The giant, multiscreen TV dominated the space and needed to go. The temp-outdoor style living room furniture needed to go outdoors. The bedrooms were good but needed some propping. The front entry was empty offering a great opportunity to feature some interesting furniture and art. Karen Mar using her amazing resourcefulness pulled most of this together. We followed up with some serious Photoshop work which included refinishing the wooden floors that bleached unevenly, strategically placing art around the house, and cleaning windows and backyard clutter. A cooperative herculean effort saved the day and created an excellent set of images everyone can be proud of.

Architectural Photographer near Napa, CA
Before: Living room with large TV and outdoor furniture on the inside.
Architectural Photography Napa, CA

Architectural Photographer near Napa, CA
Before: Cluttered kitchen and mismatched dining furniture.
Architectural Photography Napa, CA

Architectural Photographer near Napa, CA
Before: Spartan master bedroom.
Architectural Photography Napa, CA

Architectural Photographer near Napa, CA
Before: Daytime exterior reveals all.
Architectural Photography Napa, CA

Architectural Photography near Napa

Upgrading Your Web-Sized Photos: Get to 2880

Do you have high-res photos that sometimes don't look sharp on your website? Why is that? It could be your website code. In addition to "responsive" design, you also need to consider retina-ready website design. They are two different things. What does Retina actually mean? This Macworld webpage gives a good explanation. Luckily, the tools you need are out there and are getting easier to use. If you are using a theme or template from a website marketplace, such as Envato, make sure it says "retina-ready" in the description. If not, get a new one. It's worth the trouble. You've likely paid for high-quality photos so why settle for subpar presentation? If you've hired a web designer to create a custom site, or are doing it yourself, verify that it has the Javascript or CSS code necessary to downsample images to non-retina sizes. This important bit of code tells your web browser which variation of your image to display based on your viewer's device. I found this great tutorial here: The Right Way to Retinafy Your Websites.

Screen resolutions are constantly getting better. What that means is the 600px wide standard for web images has been upsized about four times in the last ten years and can now be up to 1920px, 2560px or 2880px wide, depending on your device. Apple is boasting a new 5000px wide display coming to the market! Today, it's a moving target and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

2880 px wide should be your new standard when uploading image assets intended for full-screen display on your website. It covers all your bases. Start large and let your code and web browser decide if the image should be downsampled. If you have not resized the images on your website in the last few years, it may be time to think big, again. Dont try to upsize your existing, small JPG files. Rather, go back to the original TIF files and make a resized sRGB JPG from them to the 2880 standard. You will need to compress it to keep the file size around 500KB. I choose a quality level of "6" (out of 12) in the compression dialog window when saving my JPGs for web in Photoshop. Would you like us to resize your images for you? Contact us for help.

And while you're at it, ditch any web design that is dependent on FLASH and trade it in for an HTML5 site. Embrace the change!


Commercial Photography San Francisco
Music Orange live room, San Francisco, CA.
We shoot lots of houses, public buildings and interiors, but in the past month we were lucky enough to photograph a handful of unique projects in San Francisco that have interesting stories.  Here is a quick look at two.
Music Orange

Music Orange is a creative music studio run by two unsung heroes of the music world.  Michael Lande and Hector Perez create music for TV, the web and advertising.  Those catchy tunes from TV and radio ads that just stick in the back of your brain more than likely came from their sound studios at the base of Green Street in San Francisco.  If you have children that are Spongebob fans, Music Orange created the theme song for that eternally popular cartoon series. Lande and Perez are prolific composers and musicians. They have a music library of over 900 themes that are available to license. They are also Emmy and Grammy award nominees and winners. Perez is a collector of mid-century modern design which fills the studio.

Commercial Photography San Francisco
Music Orange production room, San Francisco, CA.

A Tiny House

Hidden away on a quiet mixed-use street in San Francisco's Mission District is a neglected earthquake shack that has been given a new life by architect Karen Mar of YAMAMAR Design. After the 1906 Quake, the city hired union carpenters to erect small, temporary houses. Families could rent to own and it allowed lower-income residents to become first-time homebuyers. And so the "Earthquake Shack" remained a permanent feature. This particular "shack" was used as a contractor's office and yard until an adventurous young family bought it and decided to make it a home again. Mar calls this project the "tiny house." She cleverly manages to squeeze three bedrooms, two baths and a third floor out of a 650 square foot floor plate. Using new and recycled materials, the house has a uniquely San Francisco charm and has become an oasis for its new owners.

Architectural Photography San Francisco
View from the third floor of YAMAMAR's Tiny House.
Architectural Photography San Francisco
Architectural Photography San Francisco

Old Files

I don't reminisce fondly of the days of film, but there are a dozen or so large file cabinets that sit on my studio floor filled with a lifetime of images.  We are slowly in the process of going through each file folder and keeping only what is essential. We are keeping negatives and original transparencies, but discarding every print and paper object. Part of the psychology of being a photographer is being a collector of things. Trying to decide what image, if any, will have a future value to a historian or fellow collector is tricky.  I just wonder if that Aztec potter ever thought his whimsical figurine would be dug up a thousand years after he was gone and become an object of adoration in a museum a continent away.

Top: Brochure for Rucker Fuller, circa 1981. Bottom: Pebble Beach House by Will Shaw, FAIA, circa 1990 BCE.

Interiors Photographer
Sky Cycles art project by Catherine Widgery. Installed at the Warm Springs BART station in Fremont, CA.
A Year in Pictures

2017 was something of a visual departure for us. Along with doing our usual set of architectural work, we spent a significant effort documenting life in San Francisco. Hopefully our efforts will result in a handsome coffee table pictorial book, San Francisco Secrets, later this year. The book tries to explore what makes San Francisco such a unique place to live in and enjoy. From Chinese New Year in February to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in October, we got more than our big toe wet in the goings on of the City. Along the way, we sampled the food and drink of over forty eateries and bars photographing everyone. Here is a random sample of some of the wonderful images that found their way into our cameras.

IPhoto
New Year's celebrant in Chinatown.
PhotoPhoto
Interiors Photographer
A young musician plays the guzheng, a zither-like instrument, during the Autumn Harvest Festival. Below: Scenes from the SF PRIDE Parade.
Interiors Photographer
Interiors Photographer
Interiors Photographer
Interiors Photographer
Interiors Photographer
Trick Dog bar, Mission District, SF.
Food Photography
Food Photography
Hospitality Photography
Original furniture from the CLIFT Hotel. Past and present circa 1915-2017.

Shooting architecture and interiors is how we make our living. We were fortunate to shoot a host of great houses and commercial projects up and down the California coast and work with a handful of very creative clients, both locally and from around the U.S. From baronial estates hidden away in the Santa Lucia Preserve to sleek, modern residencies and sophisticated office parks in Silicon Valley, to impressive public works projects around the Bay, we kept very busy. Here is just a quick and very incomplete glimpse of what we did last year.

Interiors Photographer
Menlo Park Residence. Architecture by Moderna Homes.
Interiors Photographer
Orinda Residence. Architecture by ODS Architecture.
Interiors Photographer
Santa Lucia Residence. Architecture by Eric Miller Architects.
Interiors Photographer
Detail from Alameda Residence. Copper Creek Builders.
Interiors Photographer
Testing the firepole at SFO's FireHouse 3. Shah Kawasaki Architects.
Interiors Photographer
TRACE Bar at the SF W Hotel.
Interiors Photographer
City Slicker Farms, Oakland CA, Lowney Architecture.

I did several travel stories last year and spent a long week visiting each of the five National Parks in southern Utah. The local Mormons welcomed us with open arms and the scenery was amazing. Definitely a place for everyone's bucket list.

Travel Photography
Zion National Park, UT.
Travel Photography
Petroglyphs at Capitol Reef National Park, UT.

I love irony and it is often not hard to find. I found this hapless fellow asleep under a freeway underpass near our studio in Jack London Square. The MAGA hat was just a little too rich. I have the sinking feeling that his wait for the hat's slogan to deliver for him will be a long one. Happy New Year everyone.

Make America Great Again.

Hospitality Photography
View of the Luisa Tetrazzini Suite at Chateau Tivoli, Steiner St, San Francisco.
Looking at San Francisco's Rich and Varied Hotels

San Francisco has been a tourist destination long before the word tourist became popular. Its legendary hotels have been shelters for presidents, kings and opera stars since the 19th Century. As part of our ongoing travel book project, San Francisco Secrets, we took another look at a handful of hotels that share some of the city's rich and eccentric past and a few new ones that caught our attention.

Hospitality Photography
The Palace Hotel on Market St. is one of San Francisco's most legendary. Enrico Caruso was tossed out of bed by the 1906 Earthquake here. President Warren Harding died here under less than respectable circumstances. The Palace, with its grand glass domed central hall, the Garden Court, is the most classical elegant meeting space in the Western U.S.
Hospitality PhotographyHospitality Photography
Hospitality Photography
Pied Piper Bar and Grill at the Palace Hotel, featuring the famous painting by artist Maxfield Parrish.

The Clift is one of the finest examples of Art Deco exuberance found anywhere. What is amazing is the fact that it was not destroyed when Philippe Starck remodeled it 15 years ago. Having a drink in the Redwood Room should be on everyone's bucket list.

Hospitality Photography
Hospitality Photography
Hospitality Photography
Lobby inside the Clift, boasting eclectic furniture including Philippe-Starck-designed Big Arm Chair.

The W San Francisco hotel should be a corporate cookie cutter type of place serving the convention crowd. It's not. It is a chic, well-designed modern space that is several steps above it's south of Market neighbors. It has a hip, sophisticated uptown look in a downtown environment. Third and Howard St. is a busy intersection, but once inside the hotel, you don't realize that you are in the heart of the city.

Hospitality Photography
Living room fireplace at the W.
Hospitality Photography
View from the second floor lounge.The design concept for the lobby was inspired by the city, laid out in a grid pattern, constantly being interrupted by periods of shifting fog.
Hospitality Photography
Hospitality Photography

Chateau Tivoli is one of those 19th Century Victorian mansions that survived the fire of 1906, the hippies of the 1960s and the New Age communalists of the 1970s. Today it is a beautifully restored mansion that reminds us that this was always a classy place. You can almost hear the opera stars of old who were guests back in the day. Their names along with other famous San Francisco persona are on the doors of each of the nine rooms and suites.

Hospitality Photography
Hospitality Photography
Hospitality Photography
The parlor inside Chateau Tivoli, artfully restored with Victorian-era and furnishings and decor.

A View From the Other Side of the Camera

We thought we would get a bit personal and give you a look at what happens on the other side of the camera. Kristen Paulin is always documenting the job so she can tease her midwestern friends on Facebook. Here are a few snapshots from behind the scenes.
Hospitality Photography
Food shot inside the Garden Court at the Palace Hotel.
Hospitality Photography
Working on the eclipse day in August. Thank you, Catharine Garber of FGY Architects, for supplying our eclipse glasses.
Hospitality Photography
Working with plates of dim sum at Dragon Beaux.
Hospitality Photography
Adjusting the drinking chocolate at Dandelion Chocolate.
Hospitality Photography
Above: Russell, reviewing proof sheets on site in Hillsborough, for Swatt | Miers Architects. Below: sampling the wares at Paul's Hat Works, Geary Blvd, one of 30 retail stores to be included in San Francisco Secrets.
Hospitality Photography
Hospitality Photography

Architectural Photography San Jose
Modern Farmhouse, FGY Architects.
Some Houses We Like

Aside from trying to finish work on our San Francisco pictorial book, we have been actively shooting houses in and around Northern California for a variety of architects, interior designers and construction firms. Surprisingly, a handful of new firms have hired us to shoot a variety of building types, each with their unique style and challenges. We did a modern farmhouse in Palo Alto for FGY Architects, a modernist spec house for Swatt Miers Architects, a complete rebuild of a neo-classical historic house in Alameda for Copper Creek Builders and an exciting modular house in Orinda for James Rogers Construction and Sage Modern Architects. In no special order here is a quick selection of the work that we have done recently.

Architectural Photography San Jose
Modern Farmhouse, FGY Architects.
Architectural Photography San Jose
Cinnamon Ct, Swatt | Miers Architects.
Architectural Photography San Jose
Bay Street House, Copper Creek Builders.
Architectural Photography San Jose

Spring Road House, James D Rogers Builder.

San Francisco Secrets: A Book About San Francisco's Hidden Beauty and Bravado
Architectural Photography San Jose

For the last nine months we have been slowly aggregating thousands of images of life in San Francisco in all its beauty and zaniness. The book is called San Francisco Secrets and it is being published as part of a series by Images Publishing of Australia. More than most urban centers in the United States, the city is a nexus of commerce, art, frivolity and fun. From street fairs to hidden architectural gems to out of the way cuisine, we have tried to turn over many stones. The city is a crazy quilt of period architecture, creative food, lively arts and people trying their damndest to live life to the fullest. Since we are first and foremost photographers, here is a very random sample of what has made it to our cameras in the past six months.

Architectural Photography San Jose
View of downtown from Dolores Park.
Architectural Photography San Jose
Legion of Honor.
Architectural Photography San Jose
View of the Diego Rivera mural "Allegory of California" inside the City Club of San Francisco.
Architectural Photography San Jose
Architectural Photography San JoseArchitectural Photography San Jose
Architectural Photography San Jose
Architectural Photography San Jose
Golden Gate Park.
Architectural Photography San Jose
Folsom Street Fair.

Architectural Photographer California
Front page of our new website

Developing A New Website

As technology marches along, we are presented with new challenges and opportunities to develop and fine tune our image. This is true of every business, from sole proprietors to Fortune 500 companies. We just finished a two month process of rebuilding our website and reconstructing our identity. You can see the results here:www.russellabraham.com. We started with the concept of working with CMS web hosting (content management system)that was suited for photographers and other creative professionals. We created a list of site requirements and then worked our way through a surprisingly long list of CMS hosts. After testing and rejecting about ten, we settled on one, a href="https://www.sitewelder.com/">SiteWelder, that gave us the big screen look on a splash page and nested portfolios where we could display hundreds of images from scores of assignments, all in high resolution.

Architectural Photographer California

We discovered that our pictures look great BIG! Our raw files come out of the camera over 8000 pix across. Why not use all of that image power? Our opening page slideshow went from 775 pixels across to over 2000 pixels. With a little bit of Photoshop magic from Kristen Paulin, the images displayed brilliantly on both small and large screens. We also decided that we might as well put a lot of pictures on the site, rather than a small sample. We did close to 500 pictures in total. Every shot was done in the last three years, with most in the last 12 months.

Architectural Photographer California

As part of the re-branding process, we changed the firm name to Abraham Paulin Photography. Kristen Paulin has taken an increasingly active role both behind the camera and in front of the computer. Going forward, I see her both working with me and on her own as assignments arise. Take a look at the site and let us know what you think.


Architectural Photographer California

San Francisco Secrets

Working with Images Publishing in Melbourne, we have been selected to develop a beautiful, large format, picture book about San Francisco, aptly titled "San Francisco Secrets." They have published four books in the "Secrets" series, mostly in Europe. The San Francisco book will be their first in North America.

Architectural Photographer California
Architectural Photographer California
Architectural Photographer California
Architectural Photographer California

The most obvious question one can ask, are there any secrets left in the City by the Bay? The question is a good one, and we have been looking. Personally, this project has a significant bit of personal nostalgia. When I first arrived in the Bay Area many years ago, I was fascinated by San Francisco's patchwork landscape, Victorian heritage and colorful streetscapes. Climbing up and down its legendary hills, I took lots of pictures with my ancient Nikon loaded with Plus-X. Now, at the back end of my career, I am doing the same thing with a bit of déjà vu. The City has changed in all those years yet stayed the same. Freeways have come down and high-rises gone up. Neglected neighborhoods have found new residents and new life. There are not many secrets a city can keep, but we have discovered some amazing places, vistas, people and cuisines that maybe the world should know about. It is an adventure and it's still going on.


Architectural Drone Photography and Video
Russell and Artist Catherine Widgery discussing video shots at the Warm Springs BART Station.
Drones, Video, and Animation

The lines between video and still photography are getting blurred every day.  Most good DSLRs (the cameras most of us use) are also video cameras.  The cameras with full frame sensors are now equipped with cinema-graphic lenses and sound gear to shoot broadcast-quality TV.  Much of what you see today on television is shot with Canon still cameras in video mode.  Working with our favorite videographer, Eric Sahlin, we have tip-toed into the world of video and drone photography with some excellent results.


Warm Springs BART Station

Generally speaking, buildings don't move, but the camera can move around, through, and above a building creating remarkable imagery.We recently completed two projects, one a video and the other a purely drone shoot that we want to share with you. A finished video of an architectural project can be animated stills, live "B roll," and drone footage spliced together in a seamless fashion. Our video of the Warm Springs BART Station, done for Widgery Studio of Boston, was just that, a combination from all three sources. All capture modes have their pluses and minuses as you can see in this video. Some techniques, like time lapse, work best from live video while the drone may make the best long truck shots, and a slow pan shot may work best from a still image. Working with stills and live footage can be a cost effective way to create a video for your website or PowerPoint presentation.

Architectural Drone Photography and Video
This movie, shot and edited by our partner Eric Sahlin, consists of live video, still image pans, and time-lapse footage.

340 Fremont Apartments

Drone photography has come a long way in the last five years.  They have gone from toys to professional tools.  The crafts are much more stable, the lenses better, and the sensor resolution greatly improved. Recently we shot 340 Fremont Apartments for our client Equity Residential. The Fremont St. tower is sandwiched in with a dozen other high rises on Rincon Hill and presented some photographic challenges that were best solved with a drone. We were able to station the drone 75 yards in front of the building and create a boom shot that rose close to 400 feet in slow motion. Breathtaking! And my partner on this project, videographer Eric Sahlin says that the crafts are only getting better with higher resolution cameras and real video shutters. BTW, Eric has taken the time to get the FCC operator's license so we are completely legal. Sometimes, a drone shot may be your best alternative with a tricky building shoot.

Architectural Drone Photography and Video
340 Fremont Apartments. Drone video photographed and produced by Eric Sahlin.

Interior Photography San Francisco
One Henry Adams Apartments, San Francisco, CA. BAR Architects.

Trends in Multi-Family Housing

Many years ago when working for a major housing developer based in the mid-west, I asked why all their projects were located on the coasts and none in the mid-west or south. His answer surprised me: "We like to operate in high-barrier entry markets and California is just such a place." It is not any one thing that drives costs and rents, but a combination of circumstances that make the Bay Area the most expensive housing market in the country. Needless to say, many developers are jockeying for a piece of the multi-family pie with former rail yards, industrial sites and strip malls being transformed into trendy housing for millennials and whomever else can afford it.

In the past year or so, we have been fortunate to shoot a handful of projects executed by some well established architectural firms both in the heart of the city and on suburban turf. Because space is at a premium, the design paradigm has shifted to small units with some upscale amenities (washer and dryers in each unit) and large, multi-function common spaces that any ex-frat boy or start-up entrepreneur could warm up to. Game and TV rooms, lounges with demonstration kitchens (just in case Martha Stewart shows up) roof top decks, hot tubs and bike repair shops. Ground floor retail is increasingly being integrated into the design adding a significant convenience factor to the project. Under the same roof can be your gym, your favorite coffee shop and a boutique supermarket. Here are two interesting projects fresh out of the camera.

One Hundred Grand Apartments

Architectural Photography Tahoe
One Hundred Grand Apartments, Foster City, CA. Seidel Architects.

One Hundred Grand is Foster City's attempt to put on an urban face on an otherwise antiseptic suburban landscape. Located just off the west side of the San Mateo Bridge, it is a sophisticated urban oasis in a suburban environment. Alex Seidel of Seidel Architects mixes town house city living with five story urban block development on a tight site in the middle of Foster City. An expansive central courtyard with gardens, a large pool and outdoor fireplace creates a buffer to the intense urbanized exterior. A rich mix of natural and man-made materials helps give the project curb appeal.

Architectural Photography Tahoe
Architectural Photography TahoeArchitectural Photography Tahoe

One Henry Adams

Our client Equity Residential, hired us to shoot One Henry Adams. The building is in the heart of the San Francisco Design District and next to two iconic brick warehouse buildings that are still used as design center showrooms. When San Francisco was still a port city, this neighborhood was mostly warehouses and light industrial. Henry Adams, the urban developer and recycler, changed all that about 40 years ago by turning the abandoned warehouses into a vibrant center for interior design showrooms. One Henry Adams reflects some of its converted industrial neighbors by sitting on a half story tableau that was originally a loading dock and now is a pedestrian walkway. The project is divided into two six-story blocks with a handsome broad courtyard between the two and is street accessible. A second story community room opens onto an internal courtyard and allows ample space for you and 300 of your closest friends to party the night away (or until someone calls the cops.)

BAR Architects of San Francisco mixed brick, stucco, Trex and shallow bays to give the facades a sophisticated urban look while not conflicting with its historic neighbors. Each building has its own rooftop garden with downtown or waterfront views, a great place to take your date after a night on the town or just unwind after a long day in front of the computer.

Architectural Photography Tahoe
One Henry Adams Apartments, San Francisco, CA. BAR Architects.
Architectural Photography TahoeArchitectural Photography TahoeArchitectural Photography Tahoe



Architectural Photography SF Bay Area
Sky Cycles public art project by Catherine Widgery. Installed at the Warm Springs BART station in Fremont, CA.
Going Big:

Big Art at Warms Spring BART

BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) wanted to make a definitive architectural statement when they commissioned the Warm Springs Station. It may seemingly sit in the middle of a bean field, but that won't be the case for long.  Right now, Warm Springs in Fremont is the end of the transit systems line and BART wanted to make it an elegant terminus. Robin Chiang & Company won the architectural design competition and our client, the internationally acclaimed artist, Catherine Widgery, won the competition to create all the environmental art at the station.

Architectural Photography SF Bay Area
Sky Cycles public art project by Catherine Widgery. Installed at the Warm Springs BART station in Fremont, CA.

Most of Widgery's projects are large in scale and many use glass in some innovative way. The last project we did for her were a set of illuminated glass murals 40 feet high and over two hundred feet long that adorned and upscale mall in Canadas capital. Chiang's original design was a gigantic glass funnel that served as the entrance. The funnel morphed into a forty foot glass drum which became Widgery's primary canvas. Most of Widgery's work exploits the dualities of materials, and "Sky Cycles" at Warm Springs is no exception.

The BART station rotunda is both a mirror and a stained glass painting of the skies and hills that surround the station. The artwork is kiln fired on each panel of glass and is permanent. The alternating bands in the rotunda panels are made of a reflective/transparent material. Sometimes there is reflection and sometimes we see through these vertical bands between the painted sky, depending on where the light is greater. The effect is subtle and it may take the average commuter many trips through the station before they see the effect, but it is all part of the design. Big art helps make a small station a big deal.

Architectural Photography, Fremont, CA
Architectural Photography, Fremont, CA
Sky Cycles public art project by Catherine Widgery. Installed at the Warm Springs BART station in Fremont, CA.


A Big House for Some Big Apparatus
Architectural Photography Bay Area
Engine No. 11, an Oshkosh 8X8 Striker, has a 630 gallon tank on board filled with fire-fighting foam.

What do you do with a couple of fire engines that are the size of two Greyhound buses, have tires four feet high and can unload 630 gallons of foam in 60 seconds? You build a place to park and service them close to an airport runway so that they can be ready to go in a split second. SFO is a busy place, the fourth busiest airport in the United States. Close to 400,000 planes a year take off and land and over 50 million people embark or disembark annually from the airport. That is enough traffic for the airport to support three fire stations housing eighteen pieces of apparatus and a 24/7 crew of firefighters trained to handle any emergency, from an onboard medical situation to a full-scale runway conflagration.

Architectural Photography Bay Area
Architectural Photography Bay AreaArchitectural Photography Bay Area

Fighting airplane fires is very specialized and the equipment used is the same. FireHouse 3, designed by Shah Kawasaki Architects of Oakland in joint venture with YAMAMAR Design, is much more than a garage for oversized fire fighting apparatus. It is a firehouse designed for the very specific needs of airport fire safety.

Among its unique features, the building has a command center with a panoramic view of both runways. It also has its own foam fill delivery system with a 1600 gallon tank, and an oxygen tank fill station. The building's windows are triple glazed to absorb the runway roar just yards from its bays. And there's a special HVAC system to filter out jet exhaust. FireHouse 3 is a big house to handle big emergencies.

Architectural Photography Bay Area
FireHouse 3, at San Francisco International Airport.