One of my pictures has been featured in an excellent article on Tilt-Shift lenses by Nick Wilcox-Brown on the Canon Professional Network website.

As it happens, the picture selected is one where I’ve used “tilt” to do the opposite of what an architectural photographer *should* be using such a lens for. Its a technique called ‘reverse Scheimpflug’ but we can call it ‘making things fuzzier than they should appear’, which sometimes can give things a model-like appearance and is often used for lifestyle or product photography to introduce focal contrast. When I started doing this it seemed novel, but now its being done all over the place so it lacks a bit of the impact. Despite being happy to big-up Canon’s products, in general I prefer the look of the effect on 5×4 film, the shallower depth of field of large format lenses seem to create a better starting point than that which is possible with a digital camera. Nevertheless, the shift/tilt lenses can do a nice job as I think the shot in the article, and this different shot of the Bauhaus in Dessau illustrates.

If you want to learn how to use a shift lens ‘properly’ instead of the way I’ve abused it here, you won’t do much worse than to start with Nick WB’s clear article on the topic.

This week I fell prey to having a project cancelled, for the first time, attributed to the credit crunch. Sadly, online forums tell the story that architectural practices are indeed beginning to feel the pinch, with my client at least not in the position yet where they are having to lay off staff. While my business may suffer in the next months, at least I am not in that terrible position of having to make staff redundant. The business of being a photographer is very much one of ‘ducking and diving’ and keeping a basket full of different eggs.With that in mind, I’ve begun to work harder on the interiors side of my business, being joined by Fleur Brady my new stylist, who has brought some great touches to my recent shoots. The best advice I can give to anyone who wants to enter photography as a career is to do make work and invest in your photographs instead of the latest digital gadget. Fleur and I have put our time and money into some of the new interiors, and in the end, this is the best way to boot up a new income stream. In some ways photography is the easiest business in the world. Just produce photos people want to buy, and you are off. (I am being glib).

Recently I heard an anecdote about Irving Penn, and I was fortunate to get up close and personal to some of his vintage platinum prints. Being close to the prints was like being bathed in an iconic aura. Still, its a powerful message to realise that he fell out of favour with clients for a long time and the great man spent many years in the business wilderness, with little work coming his way. During that tough time, he worked away in the darkroom producing his incredible prints. This reminds me that while you may be down, you ain’t out until you tell yourself that you are. If Mr Penn can have many tough years and survive, maybe we can be inspired to make it through the coming recession with creative results. There is always personal creative work that can be done, even if the commissions are fewer, and once you have your digital camera, there’s no film costs to hamper personal project work.

While I think we are probably just at the beginning of this downturn for architects and photographers alike, I think that if its not the beginning of the end, at least we have reached the end of the beginning. The news from America this morning gives me great hope and I applaud the US electorate for reinvigorating democracy. No one person has the answers to some of the problems facing us, but perhaps we are lucky today to have on the world stage a new statesman.

I photographed Hyde Park in late Autumn for a design company who needed some shots of the view from a still to be built property on Park Lane. In truth schedule mismatches meant that I ended up shooting this a little too late in the season as by early November, sun angles are very low most of the day. As a result evening shots were then challenging as they were all to be ‘contre-jour’ (against the light). The brief required photographing the trees while still in leaf. Surprisingly trees are mostly what you can see from the rooftops of the tall Park Lane properties as there is a line of woods on Park Lane before the wide spaces of Hyde Park itself. The skyline towards the Albert Hall was punctuated by a combination of ‘dreaming spires’ and brutalist towers and monoliths.

One of my most useful acquisitions in the past 6 months has been a stock of Manfrotto Superclamps. When equipped with the right stud, they can transform a wide variety of objects into a light fitting.  In this case the shower rail was just about able to support the weight provided the light was pushed up the end near to the wall. The light here is a Bowens Esprit 750 watt second powered by a travelpak battery. This was the first time I’d used the travelpack and it worked excellently, greatly reducing the problem of trailing wires and of course its a lot safer in a bathroom or around water than a light connected to the mains.

This shot was the result of mixing mostly the ambient light from a new hotel room (to be announced the week after this blog post) with the inbuilt spotlighting in the bathroom. There was a small amount of fill flash in the room plus the light in the previous post hanging from the shower rail. The model was incredibly good at her job maintaining complete stillness for a 1 second exposure.

The sophistication of lighting is increasing in interiors and in cases light this its essential to communicate what the lighting designer intended so careful attention to the colour and mood of the light is required.

A fascinating occurence this, its a building where they have removed all the lower stories in order to rebuild. I think there might be an impressive atrium when they have finished. I had two jobs moved this week in one case because of the bad weather, and in the other because of a change in the brief. Still I thought this gives me a chance to play, so for the first time in ages I brushed off the Ebony and shot some Polaroids. After exclusively shooting digital for a year going back to 5×4 was actually a bit of a breath of fresh air. The total weight of the Ebony with a couple of lenses and all its gubbins is quite low, so in my smaller rucksack, plus a carbon fibre tripod I can happily gallivant all around town all day. This shot was heavily perspective corrected in photoshop and is from a polacolor shot I did before shooting on Provia and type 55.

I’ve now set up a listing on the Adobe Photographers Directory

There is an art to being well represented on this because of the tiny size of the thumbnails. On my next few interiors shoots I’ll keep my mind on the need to generate a killer interior shot which looks good as a thumbnail. Thumbnails have very specific needs. The purpose of them is to ‘grab clicks’ so its important that they make visual sense, even when very small. I think that this is challenging for an interior shot, much simpler with a sculptural building, or an exterior detail. Designing, shooting and making images that make good thumbnails could be considered an art in itself, similar to designing postage stamps. As I recently did a masters in photography my brain is organised for making massive prints for gallery display, making tiny thumbnails is the other extreme… from the sublime to the ridiculous one might say.

Aaron Hibbert sent me an email in which he asked me the following…

“I really want to do interiors also. Is it all wide angle lenses?”

In the interest of internet sharing, I decided to answer him on this blog, hope you don’t mind Aaron…

The question of wide angles in interiors, or for that matter architectural photographs in general, is one that I am often asked. Tastes differ, but in general they are to be avoided except where they result in a better picture than using a less wide angle lens.

This begs the question of what a better picture is. There is a whole genre of interiors photography which favours a close crop on details. In his classic book ‘Photographing buildings inside and out’, Norman McGrath refers to this style of photography as the vignette style.

Generally I try to use the longest focus lens that looks good. Longer focal lenses distort perspective much less. My favorite lens on medium format is the Schneider Digitar 47XL. That equates to a 35mm lens on a standard 35mm camera.

But there are times when only an ultrawide will do. The shot of the conference room at the head of this entry, taken last Friday, is an example where it would have been impossible to shoot the medium sized conference room without a wide angle, or even an ultrawide. The lens used here is roughly equivalent to 21mm on a 35mm camera. This lens can distort a scene quite drastically. As a result I chose this nearly symmetrical composition because it looks more natural than approaching the table from a corner.

So the answer is, preferably few wide angles, but for the 1 shot in 10 where I need the extra space an ultrawide is needed.

Sometimes its a good idea to get some extra height, many buildings look better photographed from a slightly higher vantage point, usually I can achieve this with a high tripod and a step ladder. We recently hired a Snorkel Scissor Lift to photograph a farm complex along with its farm machinery. Our client needed us to photograph some large machines and the only way to include the machinery and the buildings/landscape was to get 6M above the ground.

One limitation of these machines is that they need a level surface. Luckily a sheet of board can be used to level the machine easily, otherwise the machine refuses to lift more than about a metre (safety feature).

We hired the machine from ‘Height for Hire’ who are based near Huntingdon (Tel : 01480 890191) , they were very helpful and reasonably priced.

The photos are by one of my assistants that day, Rob Percy. My second assistant visible with me on the platform was Toby Carter (the handsome one) who won a recent AoP Student award.

Another image of the lift, showing the board used to level out the machine.