Shooting a La Cornue Kitchen
in Newport Beach

I photographed this kitchen on Via Cordova in Newport Beach last week. I had shot the house once before, about a year ago, and the owners had since reworked several rooms. This time the kitchen was the reason to come back.

A small room with one loud object

The kitchen is not big. It is essentially a galley with a return, finished almost entirely in white subway tile and white cabinetry, with white oak underfoot and Carrara marble on the counters. In a room like that, everything reflects. There is very little that absorbs light and almost nothing that provides contrast.

Except the range. A black and brass La Cornue sits in the middle of the main run, and it is the only object in the room with any real visual weight. So it does a lot of compositional work. Most of these frames either center it and let the symmetry carry the shot, or push it to one end of a wider composition so it anchors the frame while the marble and brass lead your eye across.

The skylight did most of the work

There is a skylight over the sink end of the room, and it is the reason this space photographs as well as it does. It drops soft overhead light directly onto the marble, which then bounces up into the cabinet faces and opens the shadows on its own. In a galley kitchen that is unusual. Most narrow kitchens are lit from one window at one end and go murky fast at the other.

It meant far less supplemental lighting than a room this size normally needs. I still shaped a few frames, particularly around the range where the black enamel wants to go flat, but the overall character of the light in these images is the room's own.

Where it gets difficult

The tradeoff with that much bounce is contrast. When white tile, white cabinets and pale marble are all throwing light back at each other, the range and hood lose their edges and the brass goes dull. Several of these were exposed for the black first and the room second, then brought back in post so the brass stays warm without the whites turning grey.

The other thing worth mentioning: there was carpet in part of this space that came out in post. That kind of retouching is routine on a room being marketed, but it is worth being honest that it happened.

The details are the sell

On a property like this the wide shots get someone to click, but the details are what make them want to see it in person. The brass knobs on the range, the way the marble apron on the sink catches the sconce, the small still life propped on the floating shelf. Those are the frames that end up saved and shared, and they are the ones I spend the most time on.

The property is currently available in Newport Beach for lease or purchase.