Carrollwood, Florida.

Carrollwood is the oldest of the planned communities north of Tampa and it has the architecture to show it. Laid out from the late 1950s onward around Lake Carroll, the original Carrollwood section holds mid-century houses with real design intent, low horizontal rooflines, clerestory glass, terrazzo, courtyards and carports, on generous lots under an oak canopy that has had sixty years to close over the streets. Carrollwood Village to the north is a 1970s and 1980s extension with a different, larger and more conventional stock.

The mid-century houses are the reason to slow down. That architecture rewards a photographer who understands it and suffers badly from one who does not: the horizontal lines want a level camera and honest verticals, the clerestory and courtyard glass creates extreme interior contrast that needs bracketing and flash, and the original terrazzo and wood detail is exactly what disappears into shadow in a single exposure. Shot properly this is some of the most distinctive housing stock in the county.

Lake Carroll is the other premium. It is a private ski lake with genuine recreational use, and frontage or deeded access to it is worth substantial money. From a back garden it reads as water past a hedge; from the air the frontage, the dock and the size of the lake are immediately legible.

The canopy is the constant technical constraint. On the older streets the front elevation is in dappled shade most of the day, and there is a narrow early window in which a facade photographs evenly rather than as blotches. Exteriors first, always.