Introducing “Semi Silent”: A Short Film Series About Architectural Photography

Over the past few months I have been working on a new project that I am calling “Semi Silent”. It is a series of short films that feature both my clients projects as well as a behind-the-scenes glimpse into my work as an architectural photographer – but with a unique twist… there is no talking.

As someone who has a lot to say and is always happy to share my opinion, The “Semi Silent” series was inspired by 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 in which Paul writes “… and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”.

In short, I wanted to shoot things on my own terms and create something new and I want to work with people who not only appreciate but respect my approach to photographing a project. This series was born out of that desire.

If you are interested in having your project featured on an episode of Semi Silent, please let me know.

Here are my first two (published) videos of the series:

Even though these are the only two videos that I have released, I have actually been working on this project since December 2024. I filmed 4 projects prior to these as “practice” to determine the best way to approach this. My first two attempts were filmed on my phone and GoPro, and then I filmed a few on my regular camera. I even tried one where I was talking to see if that would be interesting but it wasn’t what I wanted. I decided to try using multiple cameras while shooting as well as a stereo shotgum microphone to capture ambient sound dynamically so that (even though you may not conciously realize it) the audio that is happening to the left and right of the camera play out of those speakers. So, for example, if I am walking by the camera from left to right, the audio will move smoothly from the left to the right speaker.

I also needed to figure out how I was going to pull this off without it taking too much time and distracting me from my work. It took some figuring out but essentially what I do is determine where my next shot is going to be (or at least the general vicinity) and then I will setup two cameras (one on a tripod and one on a gorilla pod) and hit record. It really doesn’t take more than a couple of extra minutes and once I hit record I literally just forget about them and do my work. I also decided that for these shoots I would tether to my laptop or Camranger so that the view of the screen would be an additional camera angle that I could switch to. I believe that having 3 different camera angles at all times and not staying on one too long is one of the things that makes this more watchable.

I originally was going to make them ambient sound only but what I realized quickly is that there isn’t a lot of sound happening inside of a home except for the HVAC turning on and off and the reverberation of footsteps and clanking around of my tripods and lightstands. Because I wanted this video series to be kind of a quiet “fly-on-the-wall” type of video, I decided that meditative “ambient” type music would be a nice addition to the ambient stereo sounds. Plus, this is the type of music that I gravitate toward in my architectural video production work so it’s a win-win.

Finally, I needed to decide how to edit these down. Most of these shoots around around 4-5 hours long, but each recording (so far) has been around an hour long if I were to only play the actionable parts. The reason for this is because I am not recording every single thing that I do or every single shot that I make. I am mostly focused on the setup and completion of each shot. I do, however, create an extended version of each of these videos for photographers who are interested in learning more about my thought process behind each shot.