Tel Aviv Municipal Lighting Tender – Case Study

Before/after photorealistic montage of a Tel Aviv street with proposed lighting fixtures — Before/after: real location photo with 3D fixture model integrated at accurate scale.

TL;DR

Divolight (CD-Log's lighting subsidiary) was responding to a Tel Aviv municipal lighting tender. The tender required showing how proposed fixtures would actually look in five specific urban locations. I produced 40 photorealistic montages (5 locations × 8 fixture models) solo, in under a week, integrating 3D fixture models into real location photography. The tender was won, and visualization-led tendering became Divolight's repeatable standard.

Context

Municipal lighting tenders are decided largely by committee review of paper-and-PDF proposals. Standard practice is catalog photos and spec sheets. Real impact in those committees comes from helping decision-makers picture the result.

The problem

Catalog photos don't translate to street locations. A fixture that looks great in a studio shot can look wrong on a specific Tel Aviv corner.
Decision-makers can't visualize from spec sheets. Especially across 5 locations × 8 fixtures = 40 combinations.
Tender deadline was tight. No time for iterative review cycles.

Standard practice is catalog photos and spec sheets. But committee members need to picture the fixture on their street - not in a studio.

The gap between spec sheets and real decisions

Stakeholders & constraints

Stakeholders: Divolight leadership · Municipal review committee (the actual decision-maker)

Key constraints: Hard tender deadline. Solo production (no team available). Photographic accuracy non-negotiable - a fudged location photo damages credibility with the committee.

Approach & trade-offs

Option	Approach	Verdict
Full 3D rendering	Build 3D scene of each location from scratch	Rejected - 10× the work, ~5× past deadline
Catalog photos only	Standard spec-sheet submission	Rejected - doesn't differentiate, can't visualize in situ
Photo-montage	Real location photos + 3D fixture model integration	Selected - authenticity + accuracy within deadline

Trade-off accepted: lighting simulation is plausible, not physically simulated. For a presentation deliverable this was the right line; for an engineering deliverable it wouldn't be.

The process

1. Location photography

Scouted and photographed all 5 tender-specified locations, timing each shoot to capture the ambient light conditions matching the fixtures' intended operating hours. Shot from fixed reference positions to maintain consistent perspective across all 8 fixture variations per location.

2. 3D fixture model preparation

Sourced and scaled 8 fixture models, adjusting surface materials and rendering settings to match the ambient light in each location photo. Accurate material response was the step that determined whether each composite read as real or obviously artificial.

3. Montage production

Integrated each fixture model into each location photo - matching perspective, scale, shadow direction, and ambient lighting.

4. Quality check & document assembly

Reviewed all montages for accuracy and consistency. Assembled into a single tender-ready PDF document with location labels and fixture specifications.

What I shipped

Grid of multiple Tel Aviv location montages showing different fixture models — Grid view: 5 locations x 8 fixtures = 40 montages delivered in the tender document.

40 photorealistic montages (5 locations × 8 fixtures)
Single tender-ready document with fixture specs per location
Delivered solo, under one week

What I'd do differently

What I did

Produced all 40 montages individually with no shared template or reference layer system. Output spec - crop, resolution, file naming - was decided as I went.

What I'd change

Establish a per-location template library before production starts: reference layers, perspective guides, agreed output spec. Would cut iteration time significantly and make the workflow handoff-able for future tenders.

Skills demonstrated

Production speed Solo execution Visual communication for B2G buyers Establishing repeatable workflow

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