"Roofs of Italy" for Monier Inc. | Italian houses from above.

The stlye established as the corporate image of Monier Inc., a multinational corporation owner of two different brands in italy, is unmistakeable; clean line graphics on a white background. The photos have a similar tone with relaxing prospectives and overhead shots of buildings, but only enough to avoid distortion. Views of the roofs, sometimes close-ups, but more often also showing part of the house, which should looked lived into, maybe in the middle of a luxurious vegetation or in an historical context.

Shooting a roof: easier said than done

Shooting a house, with the roof as the main subject, is not easy. The first problem is to raise the point of view. The most interesting shoot is, almost never, from the ground; this is quite often unacceptable. On the other hand, it is hard to find an existing spot that offers an already elevated and captivating prospective. Nearby buildings are often not appropriate because too tall, too short, not centered or due to existing visual obstacles; only, maybe, 5% of the times we shoot from an existing spot. To solve this problem, over the years, we developed a technique that has brought us notable results.

Manfrotto Look Out Stand 269HDB-3U: shooting from the ground up

Our technique is to shoot using two different tripods. The first one, certainly an extraordinary object, maybe the only one in Italy, made of aluminum and titanium with very minimal tolerance in the construction; this allows to lift the camera to a maximum height of 50 ft. The camera is controlled by a computer on the ground.
The second one reaches only 20 ft. but is used much more often. It is a stand transformed in tripod, developed together with the designer of the Group Manfrotto-Bogen, and that is now available to the public with the code 269HDB-3U. It is extremely functional and maneuverable; I always have it with me and use it very frequently.

Hasselblad Digital and Photoshop Photomerge

The shot are in Hasselblad digital, with a resolution between 22 and 39 Mp and the lens is almost always the normal one, an 80mm in this case. When the angle is not enough, not a rare occurrence, we make multiple shots that will be later merged by using the linear stitch function; this allows to maintain a natural prospective, but it also requires great ability in deciding where to place the different shots and how and how much to overlap them. The result is extraordinary because of the natural prospective, the sharpness and the tonal range; all necessary qualities due to the slight changes in the different products as well as the necessity to often crop or enlarge the pictures.
The images that follow are a selection from the last fifteen years working for this client; some of the pictures were originally on film and the difference is notable.