The majority of my work is based around photographing people; professional headshots, people in business, in their office environment or at corporate events. However, every so often I’ll be called upon to make purely architectural images too.
It’s a side to my practice which I enjoy, so it’s a particular pleasure to get to work with property development company Bellhammer through their design agency Blast Design Limited.
Those with a good memory will recall that my relationship with Bellhammer’s Bristol city centre project (Assembly Buildings A, B and C) started during a headshot session for another client, when I took an opportunistic photo of Building C under construction. Since then I’ve returned to the site a few times to capture various stages of the project.
I was there again in June, with a brief to capture various aspects of Buildings B and C, but also to get an angle which included all three buildings in a single shot. That’s not as easy as it might sound, requiring some consideration of how the light falls on the buildings at various times of day, as well as trying to exclude other buildings or scrappy bits of cityscape.
However, give me a challenge and I’ll rise to it (within the bounds of feasibility of course).
What I came up with was two options. One based on a reference photo supplied by the client, the other an angle I found by walking the site until I located a spot which would work.
The more ‘standard’ angle is the stronger of the two images, but the one looking up at the buildings also has its strengths and uses. Giving a client a choice allows them to adapt images to whatever design and format they need, even if they don’t yet know what they need it for.
Some of the images are included in the micro-sites for the buildings, including this (see below) from Building C taken during a previous trip.
Architectural photography, done properly, won’t generate anything like the quantity of images that something like a headshot session or event coverage might. More time and consideration is required; finding the best angles, setting up a tripod, making sure verticals and horizontals are correct (unless you’re after that leaning look, of course) and often having to wait until a person or lorry or whatever has cleared the scene.
The challenges of architecture are very different to pretty much any other genre of photography, but if you have a project which needs photography, I’d be delighted to hear from you!
Email me, or call 07703 124412 for that initial creative chat.
