LA QUINTA

La Quinta is a full remodel of a contemporary villa in Marbella (Malaga, Spain), delivered by Utopia Construction, based in Palo Alto (Silicon Valley, USA) and specialized in residencial architecture and construction, for their first project in Andalusia. From the first preproduction meeting with Babak Homayouni, architect and CEO of the company, it was clear that the entire visual output would shape how Utopia would communicate the project once the work was completed, for brand campaigns and professional archive. I planned the shoot as a combined photo and video session in a single day: for spaces of this size and character it isn't usually the most practical approach, but in this case it was necessary to keep to the timeline Utopia had set. To make it work, we coordinated a zone-and-time-slot plan with the team: while my assistant and I worked in one part of the villa, Jorge from Libra Producciones was filming in another. The only moment that couldn't overlap was the drone flight, when photo and video had to be exclusive not to appear in each other's shots.

The photographic approach was to treat each space according to its own character, without imposing a uniform aesthetic on the whole. The main living area and the residential zones follow a calm language, with landscape integration and noble materials, while the lower spaces have an industrial aesthetic with a dark palette. A staircase finished in architectural steel connects the living area with the upper floor and marks the passage between the two registers. This coexistence within the same building is something common in contemporary interior photography, and it requires solving each zone with its own criteria. People appear in some shots to give scale, context and movement; in several images I worked with controlled motion blur on the subject. In the video the role shifts: a single person moves through the house as an anchor to guide the viewer, without becoming the protagonist.

For each space I used a different lighting setup: in the most open and bright areas, like the living room, I worked with natural light as a base, supported by fill flashes to balance the difference in luminosity between interior and exterior; while in the darker spaces the flashes were the main light source. The shots taken at sunset and dusk I resolved by mixing light painting and ambient exposures, so they would blend well in the final edit during digital retouching. That day we had to work with particular care on the aerial shots due to the strong Costa del Sol wind, which only eased briefly around sunset.

The material we produced over that intense day allowed Utopia Construction to communicate the project with a single, coherent visual base: architectural photography and interior photography as the central focus of the shoot, alongside material for press and editorial archive. The photographic direction was also planned with the possibility of adapting the material to real estate communication if the project needs it in the future.