Entries for Spaces Magazine Beautiful Kitchen Contest

August Issue of Spaces Magazine
If you enjoy reading Spaces Magazine like I do, then you know they recently held the Spaces Beautiful Kitchen Contest. Judging by their gallery, it looked like they had about 28 entries for this years competition. I was pleased to see that Portfolio Kitchen & Home had 6 entries that I knew of which not only demonstrates their excellent craftsmanship & creativity when it comes to designing kitchens and cabinetry, but the respect that they have garnered for doing such excellent work. I see their work showing up in more and more places every day. Kudos to the whole team at Portfolio Kitchen & Home for all their creative perspectives, and hard work.

My Favorite Entry
After taking a look through all of the entries, my favorite entry was the Daniels Kitchen. I had the privilege of shooting this beautiful space back in April and, having a love for the French culture, really enjoyed the creative details that were put into this particular design. The cabinetry is superb and the detailing of the range and accompanying backsplash is truly remarkable when viewed up close. Below are a few other images from that shoot.

French tile backsplash detail. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Sink and island detail. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Range detail with backsplash. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Custom Refrigerator door detail. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

View the Online Gallery of Beautiful Kitchen Entries
To see all the entries from this years Spaces Beautiful Kitchen Contest, you can view their online gallery. The winning entry will be featured in the August issue of Spaces Magazine.

Finding Your Work in Print
Its always fun to see your work being published as well, so I couldn’t help but get excited when the July issue of KC Magazine was released with this years winners. Sure I like seeing my own work in print, who doesn’t? But what I really enjoy is seeing all the other entries and who the other photographers were. After perusing the issue for a few minutes, my attention was captured by some fantastic images by Peter Vitale. Peter works out of New Mexico, and was brought in for this particular project by the architect. The image featured struck me from the shear magnitude of the interior space and colors. That is no easy feat to capture such an immense space, but Peter pulled this off very well and looks like this image could come straight out of Architectural Digest… and judging by his publications list, probably was in AD. Kudos to Peter!

Interiors and Environments
Kansas City maybe a relatively small town compared to the heavy hitters like New York, L.A., and Chicago, but for architecture and the arts, Kansas City has some really cool and eclectic environments. Photographer Landon Collis specializes in lifestyle photography and his work also landed in this years DEA awards. On page 84 of the July 2010 issue, we see this image by Landon.

Interior photography for 2010 Design Excellence Awards. Image ©Landon Collis. Used by permission.

I have also seen Landon’s work appear on the cover for Spaces Magazine as well as several other local magazines and commercial clients in KC. Here is another series of images by Landon also featured in the July 2010 issue of KC Magazine. Check out Landon’s online portfolio at www.landoncollis.com

Environmental photography by Landon Collis. Image ©Landon Collis. Used by permission.

Architectural Photography is a Fascinating Subject!
Architecture and interior design is a fascinating subject for me, which is why I have gravitated to that discipline more and more in my photography. In fact, architectural and interior photography is the majority of all the work I do now. I have recently been developing my work into the hospitality areas as well including hotels, resorts, spa, and restaurants, which is a perfect fit for me since these areas usually encompass architectural photography or interiors… or both! I absolutely love my job. Below are a few images I photographed for Portfolio Kitchen & Home in this years Design Excellence Awards contest.

Plaza Condo interior design by Portfolio Kitchen & Home. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Dan Meiner Studio commercial kitchen design by Portfolio Kitchen & Home. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Edwin Tanner Award winning entry by Portfolio Kitchen & Home. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Designs by Portfolio Kitchen & Home from their new design studio location at Nebraska Furniture Mart at the Legends in Kansas City, KS. Image ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Visit KC Magazine Online
To view all the entries of these fantastic interiors, you can visit KC Magazine online and look under the Library tab KC Mag – 2010 – July. KC Magazine is a wonderful source to find up and coming artists, craftsman, and entrepreneurs in KC. If you haven’t seen their mag, check it out now. They even have back issues in PDF online for FREE! Good stuff. Thanks KC Mag!

Until next time,
Cheers!

Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

I worked with Interior Decorator Ginger Jackson, who works as a freelance decorator and consultant at Designer Consignment. Together, we worked out the location and timing of the shoot and put the final touches on the scene before shooting.

Photographing Concepts
What was interesting about this particular shoot was the concept of relocating to a new city. How do you convey that in an image which is supposed to highlight interiors, and decorating ideas? An interesting challenge for sure, but we decided that simple is usually best and went for some straightforward approaches that anyone could pull off from the unique pieces that they could find at Designer Consignment.

Challenges of Location Photography
One of the obstacles of shooting on location is space. Space is almost always at a premium so their is a challenge in finding creative ways to brighten tight spaces that need a little kiss of light. That was the case in this shot below of a dining room arrangement. The only window in this room was a tiny 4×4 just off to camera right. Not quite enough to fill the room adequately in all places, but a good start. The one place that wasnt getting much light at all was the cove under the bar. All the detail was getting lost in shadow. I decided to try using a small speedlight flash off camera right at first but this proved to be way too much even at the lowest setting. I finally settled on a handheld Lastolite Tri-Grip reflector, silver side out to bounce some of the ambient daylight back into the cove. It was still a bit much for my taste, but it was acceptable for this shot. Below are the before and afters of this scene.

Moving On
While we both like the scene, we felt like the overall image wasnt quite what we were after. We decided to move on and added in the dining room table and added a few place settings for some foreground interest.

Here we added a dining room table with place settings for added interest in the foreground with the bar and decor in the background. Images ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Still not Satisfied
This was getting us closer and was much better, but we still felt that it didnt quite capture the concept of relocation. It looks nice and inviting, but when people relocate, what comes to mind first? Furniture.

Living Room is Where it’s At
Ginger had done a wonderful job arranging the weathered leather couch right next to a large 3 bank North facing window. This offered us beautiful light and though we had more space to work with, it was still a bit tight, especially in the background. In the interior photo below, you can see that the detail in the background is being lost in shadow. You can sort of see the ornate white clock on the wall, but the sculpture and wood screen are almost completely gone. If you didnt know what they were, you would have a hard time seeing it!

Before - Here is the before shot with the detail in the background getting lost in the shadows.

Creative Lighting Solutions with a Canon Speedlight
To solve this problem, I first tried bouncing the ambient light in to the scene…no dice. I really didnt want to break out my Elinchrom strobes for this, the space was really tight. I decided to try my nifty little Canon 580ex speedlight. I attached a white sto-fen diffuser cap, setup a reflector stand with an attached 1 stop diffuser panel. I fired the Speedlight through the diffuser panel with my Elinchrom Skyport radio triggers at a setting of 1/8 power. Voila!  A decent background fill in a 2 foot space.

After - Here I used a Canon 580ex speedlight with sto-fen diffuser cap shot through a lastolite 1 stop diffuser panel on a stand to achieve the nice even background fill on the decor.

Wrapping Up
At this point, we were running pretty tight on time and this was the final shot that we decided on. I think it came out pretty good, although I would have liked to tweak the background fill a bit more to see about diminishing the relatively hard shadows that were introduced by the Speedlight at close range.

All in all it was a great shoot and we came away with some great images. Hopefully, this helps some of you out there who are trying to light on location and in tight spots. Get creative with the Speedlights, there quick, powerful, small, and most importantly… lightweight!

Cheers!
Chad

This morning was an unusually difficult Monday morning. I guess it really started yesterday after playing a few solid hours of kickball on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon with our friends from Redeemer in Westport. Having not really played much sports for several years, I was really surprised how sore I was from all the sprinting, jumping, catching, and diving that comes with this game. One would think that kickball, of all games, is a fairly tame game. Our friends play to win.

Broadway Cafe in Westport. THE place for coffee in KC.

Broadway Cafe

Immediately upon rising from my bed this morning, I was keenly aware of my lack of fitness and how even though I may still feel young at heart, my body certainly is not! I also realized that I needed coffee. Fast. Slumbering to the kitchen cupboard, I opened the door and to my horror, we were out of coffee. Ugh. Knowing that my wife was also lacking her usual pep this morning, I hopped in the car, drove down the block, PAST the Starbucks, across Main st. and over to Broadway. This is where the REAL coffee is. Broadway Cafe. ‘Nuff said.

On the way back after getting a few bags of freshly roasted beans and a perfectly steamed breve by the expert baristas at Broadway, I returned home and as I was walking up the porch I reached for my keys to unlock the front door. The only problem was that I was trying to use our car’s unlock key fob! Wait, what? Why isn’t this working, why won’t the door unlock? Then I realized, oh, Im using the wrong device. Home key yes, car key fob no. Proof, that coffee is definitely needed in the morning BEFORE I leave the house to get me on the right track. Glad to live just a few blocks from Broadway. Kudos to the early morning baristas at Broadway, glad your on your game.

Posted On Design Sponge

On another note, I was checking my web stats with Google analytics today and saw a HUGE spike in web traffic to mywww.jacksonvisuals.com site. After drilling down to see where all the traffic came from, I noticed that the interior photography that I did for Kate Dixon and her brilliant circus room for the KC Symphony Show House was posted at Design Sponge. Very cool. Design Sponge is one of my favorite blogs, and is on my weekly blog reading list. I heartily recommend checking out Design Sponge on a regular basis as they always have great content and fantastic ideas posted. You can start by checking out the post on Kate Dixon’s circus room. If you haven’t seen it yet, hop on over, its awesome!

Before and after images of Kate Dixon's childrens circus room. Interior photography by Chad Jackson

Although this event has already come and gone, I was encouraged to see that one of my pictures of the KC Crossroads Arts District was used in a local Ad for the Big Reveal KC. I think what was the most encouraging was that they found my image through Google image search. Jennifer Sinnet with Big Reveal KC mentioned

With a vested interest in the Crossroads area, having lived and worked there for two years, I was more than happy to help Jennifer and her crew get this promotion off the ground. Below was the final ad that was published in Ink magazine, a local weekly publication that highlights the nightlife and events going on in KC.

Take a look at the Big Reveal KC website for more information. They intend to make this a monthly event so if your getting married or planning an event in KC, be sure to check ‘em out!

Image of the Kansas City Crossroads Arts District. ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Interior Design Photo Gallery

In case you missed the previous post or can’t make it out to the Symphony Showhouse, here is a sampling of interior photography of Kates amazing work:

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Global Exposure

It’s encouraging to see that the internet and social media really does give your work a global audience! Its truly amazing that your work, whether its interior design, illustrations, or interior photography can be viewed around the world in seconds! It was a real treat to work with Kate on this project, she is a very talented designer and a wonderful artist to work with. I look forward to working with Kate on future projects and wish her the best with her career.

Here are a few of the blogs that are featuring Kate’s interior design work:

Blossom Kids – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Blossom Kids blog in Kuala Lumpur featuring the interior design work of Kate Dixon. Photography by Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Poppy Talk – Vancouver, Canada

Poppy Talk blog featuring a 6 foot storage ferris wheel in a circus room designed by Kate Dixon. Photography by Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals.

Publications Coming Soon

Kate also submitted her work to several other blogs and publications and at least one publication out of Australia will be featuring her Circus Room in one of their upcoming issues. I’ll post that info when becomes available.

Ciao for now!

After a brief hiatus from blogging due to our recent move, Im back up and running and It’s good to be back on track!

During my time off, I took a few days to re-evaluate my focus and realized I was beginning to spread myself to thin by trying to cover to many different areas. The result was sporadic and uninteresting content. Therefore, I decided to revamp and refocus my blogging efforts into the area that I focus on the most already which is architectural photography and hospitality photography. It only makes sense that since I am an architectural photographer in Kansas City, that I would focus my content on Kansas City architectural photography!

North stairwell of the Bloch building at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Kansas City Architectural

This was the reason for renaming and repurposing this blog from Photomunchies, to Kansas City Architectural. My goal in this is to share with my readers about the area that I am most invested in, that being architectural photography. Although I am based in Kansas City, and I photograph a lot of architecture in Kansas City, I will also be sharing architectural photography and interiors from my various travels abroad as well as inspiring images from other photographers who specialize in this field.

Hospitality Architecture and Interiors

Hospitality photography will also be featured including; food and beverage photography, hotels, resorts, spas, fitness, and still life. These are all areas that help keep up my lighting and compositional chops, not to mention they are all fantastically fun to shoot.

Aloft hotel restaurant interior in Leawood Kansas. ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Photography Reviews, Tutorials, and News

I will also be adding more posts that I hope will be more helpful to many of my readers. These posts may include product reviews, photography gear reviews and news, digital photography related software including tips, techniques, tutorials, and reviews.

Photography Top Ten Lists

As with any good photo blog, it’s all about the images! That’s why I intend to regularly include a photography top ten list that will feature several different disciplines; architectural photography, interior photography, hospitality photography, food and beverage photography, and still life photography just to name a few. Feel free to pass along your favorite images and we may feature a readers top ten list as well!

Focus on Photography

Though there will be posts of various kinds, the focus will remain on photography. Specifically architectural and interior photography. With that in mind, here are a few recent architectural photos from recent shoots. Enjoy!

New fitness center for Starwood hotels Overland Park Sheraton. ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Interior design by Kate Dixon for the 41st annual Kansas City Symphony Show Home. ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Interior design detail by Kate Dixon for the Kansas City Symphony Show Home. ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Commercial kitchen design by Portfolio Kitchen and Home for Studio Dan Meiners in Kansas City. ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Interior kitchen design for Studio Dan Meiners in Kansas City. ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Interior design elements by Portfolio Kitchen and Home. ©Chad Jackson | Jackson Visuals

Visit Jackson Visuals Online!

These images are just a small sample of what you will find on my website. If you like what you see and would like to see more, please visit our website at www.jacksonvisuals.com.

Check back soon for more exciting images and photo gear reviews!

New website for Katie Dixon - Interior Designer for 41st Annual Symphony Show Home

Katie did an amazing job in designing this fun children’s room which I’m sure any kid would love to have!  I also got a sneak peak at the rest of the KC Symphony Show Home while I was there and would encourage anyone to come who is interested in interior design, living spaces, remodeling, architecture, or just enjoy seeing a home be completely remodeled by awesome designers!

You can visit the KC Symphony Show Home by getting tickets for $13 in advance or $15 at the door. Check their website for hours.

Last week was crazy with a shoot every day! That’s always good, but its hard to update blogs, tweets, faebooks, and websites when your constantly out of the studio. Im hoping to catch up on all that this week in between processing through all of last weeks images.

You may remember my shoot at the Nelson-Bloch building two weeks ago. I posted a few teasers on my blog, but I now have several more images up on my website at www.jacksonvisuals.com . The Bloch building is an amazing space but challenging to shoot as it is predominantly white on white on white. Combine the white on white with constantly changing sunlight that is streaming through the windows and you have a particularly challenging situation. Some days you luck out and get an overcast day which may not look pretty outside, but makes shooting this interior a bit more manageable as your not constantly fighting hard sunlight. The day I was there, I was blessed with sunny blue skys. Not only did I have to battle the harsh sunlight, but also the blue light from the sky that was now filtering through onto all the nice pretty white surfaces.

White balance is a critical thing and was especially important on this day. However, I really enjoy these challenges as it keeps me sharp and makes me thing carefully about each shot.

Here are a few more images from the shoot. To view the full set, visit my Architectural Photography and Commercial Interior gallery on my website.

Coming Soon!

Images from last weeks images for the 2010 Design Excellence Awards for Portfolio Kitchen and Home. As soon as I get a few spare moments to upload them!

Cheers,
Chad Jackson

Thanks to everyone for coming out to our show opening last night, we had a fantastic turnout, more than we expected so that’s always good!

I sold several prints and made some great contacts as well, so it was definitely a great success! Below are a few iPhone grab shots from the event. If you missed us last night, you can still see the show, it will be up through the month of April. You may want to call the ULC for exact times they are open, but usually, normal business hours would be ok.

Check back early next week as I will be posting more interior images from the Nelson Bloch building as well as some special projects I will be working on… super cool stuff coming soon!

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Cheers!

Chad