Congratulations Garey Gomez! - August 2018 PFRE Photographer of the Month

Congratulations to Garey Gomez from Decatur, GA, August 2018 Photographer of the Month! The theme this month was daylight exterior and Garey's image is a great example of how powerful a thoughtful composition with subtle editing can be. A true testament that you don't need to be shooting multi-million dollar homes every day to create impactful images. Thank you to everyone who participated and to the jurors who took time out of their busy schedules to contribute their votes and thoughtful commentary.

This is Garey's second POTM win this year. He previously won the foyer/entrance contest back in June with this great image.

1. Garey Gomez - #22
2. Guadalupe Garza (Tied for 2nd) - #4
3. Justin Jordan (Tied for 2nd) - #8
4. Matt Rosendahl - #20
5. Andy Wang - #17
6. Stephen Reed - #16
7. Dan Solomon - #9

Please feel free to view and comment on any of this month's entries here.

Here is what Garey had to say about the win:
Wow, I'm so honored to be named Photographer of the Month for the second time this year! Thank you, first and foremost, to all of the jurors who volunteer their time and expertise each month to comment and deliberate on all of the entries each month. I have learned so much from the PFRE blog and the comments on all of the contest entries every month. And thank you to all of the entrants this month - there were some lovely photos in this month's contest!

I was sought out by the homeowner to photograph this home when they were not happy with the photos provided by their listing agent. I took a chance and decided to quote double my usual rate, and to my surprise the homeowner went for it! That allowed me to slow down a little during the shoot, and I had a lot of fun in the process! The house is located in a really desirable neighborhood with lots of charming homes, and this house was no exception. It was very well maintained and tastefully renovated by the homeowner. The house went under contract in one day, with six offers over asking price! I was happy to get to shoot it.

The house was situated about 20 feet up from the road's surface, with stairs leading up to the front door from the sidewalk. The composition from across the street was nice, but was ruined by a telephone pole in front of the house. Moving in closer to avoid the telephone pole, I decided to perch my tripod on a small retaining wall about half way up the hill from the road, and I didn't have too much room to move the tripod around once I got it into position. My favorite part of this shot is the balance of foreground, middleground, and background, and once I landed this composition through the viewfinder I felt I had something that made me happy, so I went with it.

This image was captured in a single frame. I was lucky, in that it was a mostly cloudy day but for a moment during this exterior shoot, there was a break in the clouds that gave me just a little directionality to the light which put a little texture on the house, while still being very soft. This was shot on a Nikon D750 with a 24mm tilt shift lens, shifted up. After some basic edits in Lightroom, I brought the photo into Photoshop for some selective color adjustments for ideal white balance, and into Luminar 2018 for contrast and detail adjustments, and back into Lightroom for a small tweak to the blacks and whites and a final crop.

Thank you again to everyone involved in this wonderful contest, and all of the entrants this month! I'm so excited for this win!

PFRE Photographer of the Month Winners:

• September 2018 PFRE Photographer of the Month
• July 2018 PFRE Photographer of the Month
• June 2018 PFRE Photographer of the Month