The finished photo above is a prime example of how the beauty of a magnificent space can be brought out simply by changing the character of its lighting. The lobby of 680 North Lake Shore Drive, a mixed use office/retail/residential development located in the classic Furniture Mart building, had lost some of its visual appeal over the years as the original lighting plan was supplanted by metal halide lamps.
The building owners wanted to show the original grandeur of the space in promotional materials but had no photography that did so. After a quick trip to the site to survey the existing lighting, we decided to shoot the space at night to eliminate the daylight streaming in through the east windows. This would allow us to carefully re light the space and work at a time which would not inconvenience the building residents who use it as their entrance.
As you can see in the original survey shot shown below, the illumination is a mixture of blue daylight, orange tungsten and green mercury vapor lights. The intricately detailed ceiling has been lost to view and the warm tones of the paint and stone rendered gray to blue-green.
Over a period of two hours, we lit each area and facet of the architecture individually with electronic flash, building up a series of exposures with the camera securely anchored in place. Each exposure was made with an eye toward the final result. Some existing lighting, such as the beams thrown by the column sconces and the lighting in the far hallway, was kept intact for its character and reflections.
The following day all 26 elements were combined digitally to produce this final image restoring the lobby to its original glory. The entire project took less than twenty hours from setup to delivery of the image on disk.
