Architecture and Interior photography | Waddell House
CLIENT
STRUKT Architects
INDUSTRY
Architecture
SERVICES
Architectural, interior, residential photography
St Francis Bay sits about two and a half hours east of Port Elizabeth. Strukt Architects commissioned me to document the completed Waddell House, a canal-side residence that gave me a lot to work with across both exterior and interior. I spent the day working through the building systematically, exterior at different times of day, interiors mid-morning when the light was soft and controllable, and then back outside in the late afternoon for the warmer facade shots.
Exterior architectural photos
The building faces the canal, and that created some interesting challenges early on. Shooting into a canal-facing facade means dealing with reflected glare off the water, which can either work beautifully or flatten everything depending on the time of day and where you're standing. I spent time finding the angles where that reflection was an asset — a shot of the timber deck with the turquoise water bleeding into the background — rather than fighting it.
The aerial gave me a strong graphic composition of the lap pool, the teal tile step, and the concrete coping with the planted border, and it's one of my favourite frames from the shoot. From ground level the pool reads differently, intimate, with the bronze sculpture on its plinth beside the batten screen giving it a sense of scale.
The timber batten screens were something I kept coming back to throughout the day. Shot directly they're a texture detail; shot with light streaming through them they become something else entirely, almost abstract. Getting that light-through-batten frame required patience and the right time of day, but it's worth it when the geometry lines up.
Interior photos
Interiors like this, open plan, lots of natural materials, plenty of windows — can be deceptive. The space looks easy but controlling the light balance between window and interior takes careful exposure work and sometimes a bit of supplementary light to hold detail in the shadows without blowing the windows. I wanted to keep everything feeling natural and available, so I kept any additional light subtle.
The fireplace wall was a great central framing element that broke the space up. Photographed from the dining side with the olive leather chairs and brass pendant in the foreground, it anchors the space well. From the living side you get the curved terracotta sofa and swivel chairs with the fireplace as a vertical divider. These were two very different frames from essentially the same piece of architecture.
The whisky nook behind the sage green slatted wall was a detail that could easily have been missed on a faster shoot. It's a tight space, and getting a camera angle that showed the backlit shelving, the slatted walls, and the curved armchairs in the same frame took some manoeuvring, but reads as one of the most atmospheric spaces in the house.
Architectural details
Architecture photography lives and dies on detail work, and this project had plenty. The brushed brass tap against the Calacatta marble splashback. The copper-framed mirrors in the master ensuite. The fluted timber nightstand beside a globe wall sconce. The green-veined marble in the shower niche. These frames don't replace the wide establishing shots — they sit alongside them and do the job of communicating the material quality that a wider lens can't fully capture.
Architect, Ashleigh Basson co-owner of Strukt Architect, had everything dressed beautifully, which made the detail work especially satisfying. A well-placed bonsai on a marble island or an anthurium on a bedside table sounds small, but it's the difference between a space that reads as finished and one that reads as a showroom.
If you're an architect, builder or designer with a project in the Eastern Cape, please feel to drop me an email.