Eden Roc
I photographed Eden Roc, a contemporary family home on a sloping Seatoun section in Wellington that pushed the boundaries of bold design while still remaining functional, for its owner-designer Mike Holmes of Holmes Architecture in April, 2019. It went on to win two ADNZ regional awards. At a time when I was transitioning from photographing primarily real estate listings to focusing more on architecture and interior design, it remains one of my favourite and most rewarding projects.
Mike gave me full scope to follow my creative instincts and it was a joy to follow the changing light and mood over the course of several hours from mid afternoon to twilight on a beautiful and calm autumn day. On a technical front, I shot primarily with a Canon 17mm tilt-shift lens and a Samyang 24mm tilt-shift on a Canon 5D Mark IV body. The Samyang is not a particularly spectacular lens (I have since upgraded to the Canon 24mm TS-E II) and has several flaws, most notably uneven barrel distortion, which requires a bit of photoshop tinkering to get rid of, but the lens is good bang for the buck as they say and it allowed me to get some shots I wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise with a standard prime or zoom lens.
