St. Petersburg, Florida.

St. Petersburg is the most architecturally varied market we shoot, and the single biggest mistake in St. Pete listing photography is treating a bungalow, a mid-century block house and a downtown tower as the same job. They are three different jobs with three different lens choices and three different lighting approaches.

The historic districts, Old Northeast, Kenwood, Crescent Lake, Roser Park, are 1920s bungalow and Mediterranean Revival stock on brick streets under heavy oak canopy. These houses sell on original detail, fireplaces, built-ins, coved plaster, heart pine, leaded glass, and those details live in dim interiors with small windows. Bracketed and flashed, or the character disappears into shadow. Outside, the canopy means the clean window on a front elevation is short and early.

Downtown is a tower market and an entirely different discipline. The unit is often not remarkable in itself; the view is the asset. That means interiors blended hard against the glass so the water, the pier and the skyline survive the exposure rather than burning to white, and it means shooting toward the light rather than away from it. Balcony and view frames matter as much as the rooms.

Then there is the mid-century stock west and south of downtown, block construction on open lots with terrazzo floors and low rooflines, where light is easier but bright white walls and flat roofs need bracketing.

One practical constraint: much of the downtown waterfront sits close to Albert Whitted Airport, so aerials there need authorisation arranged ahead of the shoot rather than on the day.