Eco Design Consultants of Milton Keynes recently commissioned me to photograph a passivhaus new build just outside Cambridge. 

I always try to have a few options for days to shoot exteriors, as the weather can be problematic in England. But on the first chosen day for this shoot, it was perfect. The first south-east facing exteriors were shot in the early afternoon, followed by the interiors. Once these were done, I moved outside again to capture the sun on the north-west elevation.

I then went away to the Cambridge service station, which allows three hours of free parking, sat down with a coffee or two, and processed most of the images. 

I returned to the site at about 8.30pm, when the 'blue hour' had just begun, which was perfect for the dusk shots. These involved three different exposures each; the images were stacked in Photoshop and the appropriate light levels selected for each area of the building, so that details on the brickwork could still be seen, whilst the illuminated interiors appeared bright, but not washed out.

Because the building was relatively small, and in a fairly open plot of land, it was possible to shoot most of the exteriors using a Canon 24-105 mounted onto my EOS 5DS-R. Most of the interiors were done with a Canon TS-E 17, allowing a very wide angle and perspective correction.

Fruit for scale - the photo demonstrates the thickness of the walls.