hotel exterior

TownePlace Suites Marriott St. Petersburg Clearwater commercial hotel shoot

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TownePlace Suites by Marriott St. Petersburg Clearwater outdoor pool - Nikon D300 with Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR mounted on Induro CT214 tripod with Nikon MC-30 cable release

Continuing my partnership with area Marriott hotels (see Historic Courtyard), last week I photographed the exterior & interior of TownePlace Suites St. Petersburg Clearwater.  This hotel is designed for long term stays with the rooms featuring kitchens and additional living and work spaces within the suites.  To my surprise, this hotel is also pet friendly, so your dog or cat can stay with you!

Lobby area features of TownePlace Suites - snacks & front desk are HDR; gym is single exposureI really liked the "In a Pinch" snack shelves for some reason, maybe because of the clever name or the fact that you can just grab a back of chips right from the lobby.  It was the hotel management's decision to photograph the front desk with no people.  The photograph mine will replace did include people.  What do you think, should a hotel lobby/front desk shot include people in it or not?

Features of suite rooms at TownePlace - kitchen, bedroom, living room are HDR; bathroom is single exposure with speedlight in the tub!Photographing rooms is very hard.  You might think making a sunset portrait on the beach is harder, but to me, photographing a hotel room is because the lighting is more of a challenge indoors.  I use a combination of HDR and off camera flash techniques to produce the best results given the rooms windows and ambient light.

St. Petersburg Florida Commercial Hotel Photography Courtyard Marriott

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St. Petersburg Commercial Hotel Photography - the Courtyard Marriott at dusk in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida - 7-bracket HDRMy commercial photography work for the Courtyard Marriott in downtown St. Petersburg continues with an exterior and interior shoot of the hotel itself (see commercial wedding shoot).  This job spanned mutliple days because day and evening exterior shots were desired by the client.  The HDR sunset shot of the hotel exterior at dusk was the very last shot to make.

St. Petersburg Commercial Hotel Photography - Courtyard Marriott historical lobby - 7-bracket HDRFormerly the Pennsylvania Hotel, the now Courtyard Marriott has a nearly 100-year old history.  The lobby retains the most of the original features of the hotel including the crown molding and tile flooring along with the marble wall accents. 

St. Petersburg Commercial Hotel Photography - Courtyard Marriott suite room - 7-bracket HDRNo matter how wide of a lens you have, photographing rooms, in particular hotel rooms, is still challenging as it is ideal to show as many features of the room in a single shot.  The challenge lies in the fact that not all these room features tend to line up in a neat row.  You can of course stitch multiple shots together, but then that would not look natural.  For a viewer to know this is a suite room, the bedroom and separate living space needed to be shown in the same shot.  

St. Petersburg Commercial Hotel Photography- indoor pool at Courtyard Marriott - 7-bracket HDRHere is a tip for pool photography, never show the whole pool in the shot in order to strategically leave the entire size of the pool to the viewer's imagination.  This is of course unless a hotel has an olympic size swimming pool they want to show off!

St. Petersburg Commercial Hotel Photography - office workspace at Courtyard Marriott - 7-bracket HDRAs you can see with all the above interior shots, I shot into a corner of the room which gives an image depth and dimension.  Very rarely is it best to shoot straight at a flat wall.  Shooting into a corner often naturally shows the most of an interior space anyway.