Oh – hello again!
You know… I’ve been meaning to ‘revive’ this blog from it’s dormant state for a long time now (like, 5 months), and I’ve been agonizing for the last little while about how I’m gonna start it up again and get you up to date with all the interesting shoots I’ve been doing.
But* you know what? Today I decided I was done with agonizing, and I would just continue blogging as if I had never stopped.
So today I’m going to tell you about the shoot I did this afternoon – and if I have some quiet patches coming up, then I can use them to tell you about some of the other shoots I’ve done going back a few months. So there.
Anyway, welcome back… I hope you find something here of use, whether you’re a commercial user of photography; professional or student photographer; or just arrived here by accident 🙂
*I’ll start my sentences with conjunctions if I feel like it – it’s ‘conversational’.
Building facade number 943
Well, I’m not sure if I’ve shot that many…. maybe it’s less, maybe it’s more! (who’s counting, anyway?)
The client phoned me yesterday afternoon. They had received an unexpected request from their head office in the US for a high-quality image of the front of their building, to go in a book about the company history.
– And they needed it, like, yesterday.
Fortunately Melbourne’s autumn weather was kind to us, and the site was fairly tidy. I shot a couple of dozen frames; set up my laptop in a spare office inside, and got to work on the shots. In the end I selected half a dozen, tidied up a few little things, and delivered them to the client on the spot.
That’s a wrap!
Plain, overcast skies can create quite a challenge when there are no other options about when the shot can be obtained. I’m sure I’ll have a story to tell you about that another time!
Technorati Tags: photography building photography architectural photography commercial photography professional photography
14/05/2007 at 16:03
You got a near-perfect blue sky! Although sometimes a nice puffy white cloud helps.
I’ve tried to fix gray skies in photos (and once tried to work on a system that replaced a gray sky with a blue one for a staged shot in a theme park in front of one of the park’s “landmarks”) and the results were unconvincing.
14/05/2007 at 17:58
I’m afraid I can’t take credit for the sky! The timing constraints on this job were strict, so I would have had to work with whatever the weather gods gave me. I just got lucky!
If it’s overcast I usually try to re-frame the shot to minimise sky (by getting up higher and pointing down, for example); or avoid overexposing the sky and then darken it heavily in post-production to bring out all of the detail. The trouble with the second approach is that it can look more dark and moody than is appropriate for the intended use of the picture.
I have to agree with you about trying to fake blue skies after the fact. It’s very, very hard to get a convincing result. The real estate section of the newspaper is a case in point.
14/05/2007 at 23:30
Now they need someone to work on their website!
http://www.sensient.com/
(Though this may not be them….)
15/05/2007 at 06:56
The full company name is “Sensient Technologies”, and they have a proper website at sensient-tech.com.
sensient.com seems to be registered to someone else.