Did I Recently Shoot "The Most Expensive Home To Sell In Lake Tahoe"? I Did!!!

Recently, I had the honor of shooting an incredible property on Lake Tahoe. It is not listed on the MLS but it has an asking price of 100 Million dollars!

According to an article in the Robb Report: "The home is currently Nevada’s most expensive listing and will likely break records as the most expensive home to ever sell in Lake Tahoe." I did not know those facts when I shot the property, but I did know it was something special. Certainly not your average Tahoe home with brown wood siding and a chainsaw carved wood bear out front.

Screenshot from RobbReport.com

The home is currently the "Home of the Week" on the Robb Report. I was not told much information about the house when I shot it, this article did a great job at filling me in on the home's history. They also used a bunch of my photos in the article. The house was so big that the real estate agent actually hired two photographers to shoot the house so we could get it all shot in one afternoon/evening.

Robb Report Article: https://robbreport.com/shelter/homes-for-sale/100-million-lake-tahoe-nevada-mansion-private-beach-1234677486/ (more photos and information about the house)

Ok, time to fess up... Those sky's are fake! Photoshop has recently done an incredible job at updating their sky replacement feature and I am a fan. However, please know that I would never use this technology on my fine art landscape photos. I will use lens filters on those and I do dial in the image using Adobe's RAW converter, but I would never add a fake sky to an image that I plan on printing up big and selling as a limited edition print.

All is fair in love and marketing, so I am a huge fan of the upgraded technology for the real estate photography that I produce.

Two flash units were also used to light up the foreground and home a bit. A healthy amount of dodging and burning is done during processing to help balance out all the light.

Yup, another fake sky. But the sitting area above is real, and so it the huge sandy beach below. When I got home from the shoot, I told my wife that I would be happy just setting up a tent and living on that beach. She thinks the house is too much and not a good use of money. I say that if you have enough money to buy this house, you don't really care about money any more. I'd have to win the Lottery twice to afford it, but I could see myself living there and I certainly was daydreaming a bunch on the job.

The photo below is the sunset view from the third floor balcony. The large pier was supposedly built when the property had a restaurant and hotel on it, before the mansion was built. The sunset never fired off with color, which is why the sky replacement tool was used, but this sunburst shot below still looked nice with the natural sky. People often like to tell me how I shot my photos.. and 9 times out of 10, they like to tell me that I photoshopped in my sunbursts. I understand the distrust these days but nope, nice sunbursts like that are created using a small lens aperture, like f/22. I was able to achieve the same look way back when I shot 35mm film.

Alright, if any of you Hive whales end up buying this property, I expect to be invited to the housewarming party. Lol.

Thanks for looking. Happy daydreaming... And have a great day!

Scott Thompson
www.ScottShotsPhoto.com