We were commissioned again to shoot a couple of images for one of our most esteemed clients; Sheraton Montazah.

This time, three shots were required;

Caesar bar, La mama restaurant and Nelsen Meeting room

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Caesar bar

Caesar bar is a spacious place where drinks are served, dancing parties and disco tech play at late night for customers who enjoys it.

The moment I walked in, the place was literally stuffed with chairs and tables everywhere, there was no way I'd shoot it like that ; so, we spent like 45 minutes decluttering the space, removing those extra chairs and tables, staging what we chose to leave in place till we settled on this look.

lighting was relatively easy, most of it took place from camera's right side, and outside the frame, so no flare issues or anything like that, however the big window facing the camera directly was disturbing, so, I chose my ambient base exposure carefully, not to have any blown out areas flaring towards my lens, and after all global lighting and light painting took place, I took care of that window individually, then dropped it in at post.

Post editing was a pain in the butt, turns out we forgot to remove extra few stuff that I had to remove in Photoshop.

La mama

La Mama shot was joyful to build up, I think I started shooting at around 10:30 am, as usual, we started figuring out the best possible look for the tables there, and moving the camera to make sure our composition was neat and tidy.

In terms of lighting, there was 2 big softboxes shining through the windows facing the camera on the opposite side, replicating day light, but with better quality, moreover, 2 speedlights to camera's left were shining through umbrellas to fill in the shadows.

After getting done with global lighting, we started individually light painting the chairs and other places where global light was not exactly efficient.

In terms of post editing work, it was a typical interiors shot, first we got the base exposure right by merging several ambient mixes with other ambient-flash mixes, afterwards, we got our light painted objects dropped in nicely, and Voila.

The last image was for:

"Nelsen"

Nelsen meeting room was the most torturing image I ever did in my whole life, not just because of the work I did on it, but because of a goofy mistake that forced me to start over the whole thing again.. Yeah bad things happen unfortunately.

This room is probably as old as the hotel itself, and it's never been renovated or revamped since, which means extra effort on our side; the room has the lovely Alexandranian sea view, which is a "must include"; this is why we chose to shoot it near sunset time.

We started working on that shot at about 4:30 pm; as far as lighting goes there was 2 big umbrellas on the far right and left lighting the room from the sides; several exposures were taken blending different ratios of flash/ambient to make sure that we got all our basis covered; afterwards, we individually light painted those leather chairs to make sure their texture and color was showing up nicely.

In post, it was time consuming because there was a lot of cleaning up to be done almost with everything; walls, window metal frames, curtains, you name it, but I think we managed to pull it off nicely at the end.

As you may have guessed Interiors/Hospitality photography is my passion, so, hopefully that reflects on the images.