Eat In Kitchen

Here's another one of Perry DesJardins' killer kitchens. This was shot during a day and half of image capture at a custom-built DesJardin home in Goochland County, VA.

Deciding what to leave in was the challenge in this shot. The home owner, like most of us, had all sorts of tchotchkes around the kitchen (with all that counter space, wouldn't you?)

But since I was shooting for the builder, we needed minimal distractions. The marble counter tops, custom cabinets, tile back splashes, lighting, etc., needed to be the stars of the show.

So I set up the tripod, framed the shot, and asked my assistant, Karin, to start removing items one by one. The challenge was for her to remove the cookbooks, decorative plates, potted plants, etc., and stow them in such a way that she could put them back just as she found them, so the homeowner would find the kitchen just as she left it.

The lighting is a combination of window light (provided by floor to ceiling french doors) in the out-of-the-frame family room to the right of the camera, and the tungsten lighting within the kitchen. Several bracketed exposures were sandwiched together in post-production to achieve this final image.

We're pleased with the final result...there are just enough decorative details in this kitchen to make it pretty, without being distracting to the overall design.

All images & text copyright 2008 Elaine Odell/Church Hill Photography, LLC.