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Posts Tagged ‘Commercial’

Getty Images Reportage shifts from editorial to commercial focus

03 Sep
Getty Images Reportage has gained a reputation for photojournalism and covering important issues.

Getty Images has reportedly communicated a change in strategy for Getty Images Reportage. Launched in 2007, Reportage represented top photojournalists, as well as emerging photographers, with a focus on in-depth features that addressed important issues and stories. Some of these have included the Haiti earthquake, the war in Afghanistan, Nigerian and Somali pirates, and the nuclear legacy of Northeast Kazakhstan.

The company announced that as of October, Reportage will no longer represent its photographers for editorial assignments. In its place, Getty will back a new commercial agency called Verbatim, which will represent Reportage’s photographers to commercial clients instead. According to the report in TIME, Reportage will keep its Emerging Talent program, but will become mainly an archive following the transition.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Bentley creates a 53 billion pixel car commercial

21 Jul
There’s a car in this picture somewhere – zooming in to the full 53 billion pixel image allows you to find it.

As part of its latest marketing campaign, car manufacturer Bentley has created a 53 billion pixel image, made up of more than 700 individual photographs. The extreme resolution allows viewers to zoom so far into the picture (above) that the needlework of Bentley’s logo on the seat cover of a car passing over the bridge can be seen – from 700 meters / 2297 feet away.

When the whole image is viewed it isn’t obvious there’s a car in the frame at all, as the panorama shows the whole 1.2 mile span of the bridge and a good length of coastline as well, but as the zoom function is activated the image magnifies dramatically.

The picture, which Bentley is calling the world’s most extraordinary car photograph, was shot by British photographer Simon Stock, using several Nikon D810 cameras fitted with lenses of between 300mm and 1500mm. The cameras were mounted on robotic heads that scanned the area in steps shooting a series of high-resolution long-lens pictures that were stitched together in post-production to create the final image.

Simon explained some of the process to DPR:

‘The challenge was to create an image in which the viewer could experience the journey from an epic wide panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge and zoom through the image to the intricate stitching on the car’s seat in order to highlight the craftsmanship and obsessive attention to detail that makes Bentley cars so unique.

To capture the giga-pixel image we used multiple robotic heads based on the NASA technology developed for photographing the surface of Mars. This breaks down the overall view into a large number of individual captures which we then stitch together to create the final image.’

‘I spent quite a bit of time testing all the various systems, cameras and lens combinations to get to the final result as no one had attempted this level of zoom before. One of the main issues working this way is that you can’t see the final result until you’re back in the studio and have stitched all the images together. This makes the testing quite a lengthy process.

The final image was made up of approximately. 700 hi-res images and ended up at 53 billion pixels in size. To give you an idea of scale, if this image was printed it would be the size of a football pitch.’

‘The time it took to capture the entire image varied between 2 and 4 hours depending on the focal length of the lens being used – the longer the focal length the more captures were required to make up the final wide view.

One unforeseen problem was the fact the Golden Gate Bridge can move up to 26ft in either direction when it is windy ! This made stitching the captures together quite complicated.

Mustard Post, who worked on the post-production, had to find new ways of working on such a large image as no one had tried to retouch on this scale before.

The post-production on such a large image was a real challenge because just opening and saving the file could take a couple of hours, even though we were using the most powerful Apple Mac Pro available.’

To see the full, zoomable image, visit the Bentley Motors website. The Bentley Mulsanne Extended Wheel Base that features in the picture starts at £275,000/$ 400,900.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Tokyo Drifter: Editorial and commercial photographer Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

07 Feb

Tokyo Drifter: Editorial and commercial photographer Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Azusa by Alfie Goodrich

First published in 1991 at the age of 23, portrait photographer Alfie Goodrich has been shooting primarily in Japan since 2007. His eye as a photographer as well as a fluency in both English and Japanese has brought him a diverse portfolio of commercial and editorial clients, including Ferrari, Lamborghini, United Airlines, Condé Nast, Air Asia and so many more.

Goodrich counts on more than just his bilingualism to bring him clients, however. He’s a master of SEO, as well, with a daily blog that pulls in between 40,000 to 80,000 unique visitors a month, a self-produced online magazine and a Google+ page that sports more than a million followers. When he’s not shooting, he also leads workshops and tours for photographers looking to work in Japan, and has even published his own Google guide to photogenic locations throughout urban Tokyo and Japan.

Find out more about Goodrich by clicking through the slideshow and accompanying Q+A. For more imagery, visit his website, www.alfiegoodrich.com and subscribe to his magazine ‘Stekki’. You can also follow him on his blog, Google+, Facebook, Instagram, 500px, and Flickr.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Kamakura by Alfie Goodrich

You began your career as a music portraitist and photojournalist in the UK. What was behind the transition to travel reportage and editorial work?

Actually, pretty much all of my professional photography work in the UK was done within the realm of the music business – which I was involved in from 1992 to 2002. Whilst I was PR Director for Nimbus Records, I shot a lot of stuff for CD covers, at recording sessions and events I was organising. Later, whilst general manager for Black Box Music in London, I did more of the same. Once I left music and started my own business, I started to mix up the subject matter a little more, providing a one-stop shop for people needing PR, websites, hosting and photography to promote and market their own companies. As my career changed, so did the subject of my photography.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Akari by Alfie Goodrich

When did you decide to make the move from England to Japan, and why did you decide to stay there?

My wife is Japanese. We met in the UK and lived together there for seven years, having two of our three children during that time. We’d been thinking of moving to Japan for some time. I lost both my parents within six months of each other, in 2005 and 2006. After that, we needed a change of scene. My parents had been very active in the local community, as had I. They were good times but, yes, a change was required.

I had some friends in business, some of whom were doing very well from diverse, international businesses built up over decades. People like that generally have a good sense for what’s in the wind. One of them, who had some experience of business in Asia, warned me that he felt Europe had some hard times ahead and that my thinking about a move to Japan was a good idea.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Fuji by Alfie Goodrich

(cont.) We left the UK in October 2007 when the yen was 210 to the Pound. Under a year later, Lehman happened and the Yen-Pound rate dropped to 105 at one point. My friend was right. Asia and Japan have weathered the financial crisis a little easier than friends of mine have back in the UK. For me to work in the way I do in Japan but do that back in the UK, we’d be looking at living and raising a family in London. Tokyo is very different. It’s safe, safe for the kids and safe for me to do my job – often dripping in camera equipment – without ever needing to look over my shoulder.

That’s one reason we’ve stayed here. Anther is that here I am different. I’m not a local. I have a different eye for Japan than a local photographer does; different working methods. I’ve made that work in my favour.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Johan – Akiko by Alfie Goodrich

Have you found any significant differences working in Japan as compared to working in the UK – not just culturally, but on the business side of things?

There are many differences between the UK and Japan and whilst nowhere is perfect, Japan and Tokyo tick a lot more boxes for us right now than London or the UK did. Little amusing things happen all the time, like asking if I could move a chair out of the background of a shot and having the company’s PR team all look at each other as though that was something that needed a board-level decision. My response at those times is just to make light of the situation, move the chair myself and then say ‘well, perfect… now you can blame the foreigner’.

There is a very hierarchical decision making process at work in Japan. Responsibility is a collective thing, not really down to individuals. That’s good in some ways but it can prolong decision making and during a shoot, things are often fluid and decisions need making quickly. Once you’ve built people’s trust with you then it’s different; they’ll give you more of a free reign over things.

One of the good things I would say here is that once you make business relationships, they tend to last. In the UK I would often come across the situation of having clients disappear to someone else based on cost: if Photographer X down the road was delivering Product A for £1 less an hour, then they’d move. That doesn’t happen in Japan. Trust and relationships take longer to build, which can be frustrating at first, but once you’ve made that relationship it isn’t really ever going to go south over trifling amounts of money.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Kawasaki Daishi by Alfie Goodrich

You mention in an interview that budgets have shrunk so companies are looking for local photographers to carry out campaigns rather than flying out a production. What measures have you taken to ensure that you’re the ‘go-to’ photographer that they will think of in Tokyo and these other cities?

In terms of how I compare, from a client’s perspective to, say, a Japanese photographer then I think the main difference is my eyes. I see things from a foreigner’s perspective. Japan is still new and fascinating for me, after almost a decade of living here. I work differently to the locals. That can sometimes be a curse but usually it’s a benefit; where it might take a Japanese photographer a team of seven people to do even a small fashion shoot, it takes me three. Working quicker, more efficiently is something I would say that is an advantage.

I spent a lot of time getting my web presence sorted out and integrating it with SNS sites. So I have a good footprint on the web and on the search-engines. The photography teaching I do also helps a lot, making my network of contacts here and abroad more diverse and giving me a something different to blog about and publish online, which isn’t just about my own work but about encouraging and championing others.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Asakusa by Alfie Goodrich

Besides speaking English and Japanese, what is it about your expatriate status that has given you a leg up over other photographers in Japan?

I am of course well-mannered and have respect for the local customs and culture, but being a foreigner means that it’s possible to skirt many of the conventions that hold local people back from being true to themselves 100%. I think for me it’s also about having come here at the right age. An old boss of mine once said that ‘when you get to 30, people take you more seriously. By the time you reach 40, you don’t give a shit whether they do or not!’.

I was 38 when I came here, with a wife and two children and on the back of just losing both my parents. Since then, we’ve had another child, I hit 40 and, to be very honest, I just have no time for bullshit anymore. Or for games. I’m also pretty happy with who I am. Still not perfect, obviously, but happy with the imperfections. There really is only ONE me.

Japanese people, because of the nature of their society, really don’t tend to get much chance to be totally themselves except when they are by themselves. They have one face for themselves, one for inside the house and one for outside the house… for work. Being myself and being happy with that person has been a large part of doing well here. You obviously have to have the skills to do the job, that goes without saying.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Baja by Alfie Goodrich

Since the beginning of the year, you’ve been an Ambassador for Hasselblad in Japan. How did that come about and what does that entail?

The boss of Hasselblad Japan is a Brit. Once we met, that certainly helped: shared heritage, same daft sense of humour, same propensity to swear every other word. I think he’d heard my name crop up quite a few times around the time that Hasselblad opened their shop and gallery here in Tokyo. The same had happened to me with his name. The foreign photographer community here is fairly compact and we were bound to meet each other eventually.

We had a meeting, talked about some of the things I was doing with photo education and which I was keen to explore with a camera company, especially one as legendary as Hasselblad. The boss and I got on well, we spent a bit more time hanging around with each other, I knew they had an ambassador programme and eventually we ended up talking about it and I was offered a post. It’s been a lot of fun.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Alfie Goodrich and his travel pack

What do you shoot with?

  • Hasselblad H5D-50c
  • Hasselblad H4D-40 as backup
  • Nikon D800E
  • Fujifilm X100 [borrowed from a friend]
  • Countless lenses

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Iambo-ishii by Alfie Goodrich

What is it about the Hasselblad system that first appealed to you as a commercial portraitist?

First of all, the people at Hasselblad are human, friendly, passionate and down to earth. Yes, it’s business and of course it has to make money and be viable. But it’s about more than that. It’s about giving people an experience, sharing that feeling of joy and excitement that comes from having a truly awesome piece of machinery in your hands to take photos with… but at the same time, making sure it’s not all about gear. It’s about the image, the photo, the moment. The gear is crucial but it’s not everything.

As a perfectionist, I love being around people that are the same and Hasselbad are truly perfectionists. People often ask why the cameras are so expensive… well, part of the reason is that they are perfectionists. Craftsmen, perfectionists. And really, nowadays, buying a digital Hasselblad well of course they are not cheap but having one is the closest you will get to a ‘camera for life’. In the digital, throwaway, planned obsolescence society we live in now that’s a hard thing to say. But it’s true. So now imagine that camera for life and having unlimited free film, forever… and it doesn’t seem quite so expensive anymore.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Meijimura by Alfie Goodrich

(cont.) For me, why does Hasselblad appeal to me? The colour rendition is amazing, very film-like. Skin tones are perfect straight out of the camera. The True Focus system [which uses a gyro in the camera to re-focus after you have re-framed] helps me shoot at the large apertures I like and still nail the focus every single time.

The range of lenses is great and as ambassador I get to use what I like, as long as they have one available at the time. So, after really only using the 80mm and the 28mm a lot from the HC range before this year, I’ve been playing a lot with the amazing 300mm F4.5, the 210mm and the 120mm macro. I’ve also had a lot of fun with the CFV-50c digital back for the old film Hasselblads which is, for me, the fantasy come true of having all the wonderful usability of the older cameras but the convenience of the digital back.

The Hassie flash syncs up to 1/800th sec. That and the range of lenses they have, which often stop down to F32 and F45, give you a lot of flexibility to kill the sun when you are shooting with flash outdoors. The Nikon only syncs to 1/250th.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Ruri by Alfie Goodrich

As a Hasselblad Ambassador, you have ‘kid in a candy store’ access to their lenses. What have been a few of your favorite lenses so far?

Like I said before, the 300mm is astonishing: super sharp wide open at F4.5 and still super sharp when you stop it down to F45. It’s not light but it’s perfectly balanced. A joy to use and I use it hand-held a lot.

The 120mm macro is so sharp you could cut yourself on it. Lovely handling too. The first one I spent time with was the 100mm F2.2. I used to have the old Zeiss manual-focus 110mm F2 which was a beautiful lens. But it was seductive at F2, drawing you in what the lovely bokeh, only to leave you on the rocks of despair when you realised half the shots were out of focus.

With Hasselblad’s True Focus, you can shoot the 100mm all the way open at 2.2 and be sure to nail the focus every time. The 24mm is something also try to get my hands on when I can. Pretty much the widest lens for digital medium format and stunning on the right circumstances of subject matter. The TS1.5 tilt-shift converter has been fun too. I could go on… I mean, it’s a nice candy store.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Shinyong Kimono by Alfie Goodrich

You also shoot with the Nikon D800, D700 and D3X. When do you find yourself employing that system instead of Hasselblad? How do the two systems compare?

When I need lighter more compact cameras I use the Nikons. I don’t mind weight but if I need to hand-hold a shot at 1/4 sec then that’s more likely to be doable with the Nikon. I also have a lot of old Nikon glass which I like using a lot on the new cameras. So, sometimes it’s just because I have a lot of lenses at my fingertips that I use the Nikons. For shooting at a higher frame-rate, the Nikons win every time. Hasselblad is not built for that.

You have to play a camera, any tool, at its strengths. That goes for weatherproofing too. My D700 now has about 650,000 pushes on the shutter and has been through five typhoon seasons with me… and it’s been in the sea. The camera is practically bullet-proof. Best thing Nikon made since the F4, IMHO.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Keihincanal by Alfie Goodrich

(cont.) The Hassie I shoot the most is a CCD sensor camera, the H4D-40. It’s not a high ISO camera and I rarely shoot it above 400 ISO, although it’s still doing OK at 1600. The colour on the CCD chip vs the CMOS in the Nikons is huge. The dynamic range too. If I need large dynamic range, if the colour is super important and required to be nailed in the camera then I use the Hassie. I hardly do any post- production on the Hasselblad shots. If I am in the studio, it’s Hassie all the way.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Shinyong by Alfie Goodrich

With more than a million followers of Google+, do you have any tips for managing a presence on the site? Why has it become your social media site of choice?

I’m sort of getting back to Flickr too lately after a long break. Yeah, Google+… well I had a friend invite me to it very early, almost from day one of the site being open. The big thing for me was to investigate how well it integrated with other Google products, particularly whether it had any bearing on SEO and how far up Google you came. There are lots of articles out there on the net about G+ having no discernible effect on SEO. I’m not a techie but I can tell you that it has helped me get found.

One of the first reasons I was also attracted to G+ was that, via a plugin I have called Google+ Blog which was developed by photographer and coder Daniel Treadwell. It’s allowed me to post on Google Plus via by iPhone and have the posts pulled out and cross-published on my WordPress sites by the plugin. That solved two issues for me: first was that there was really no decent app on the iPhone for blogging on a WordPress site.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Rebel Rebel by Alfie Goodrich

(cont.) Secondly, the cross-posting gave me three bites of the SEO cherry with a post that shared the exact same title as the one on G+. And Daniel’s plugin preserves a link back to GPlus in the footer of each post. All these things have conspired to create a situation where, if I get clever about what I call my posts on G+, searches on Google’s main search engine containing the same words can mean me getting listed on page one of Google within 40 minutes of making the post. That’s powerful marketing for a small business or freelancer.

I’ve made some good friends there and you always have to give something to get anything back in life. So, putting out rich posts that have a backstory about how I shot the pic and why; these posts have always got good attention and allowed me to cultivate a nice audience.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Yokohama Rain by Alfie Goodrich

You’re also quite active on several other social media fronts. Which do you recommend photographers invest their time in the most?

Facebook is, for me, really just about keeping in touch with friends, making some new friends and having a personal place to chat informally. I don’t really use it for work. It’s my garden fence over which to gossip. The main thing I hate about FB for photography is that the JPEG compression is awful. It makes photos you post there look bad, so why would I use it so much for that? Google+ is all about photography. Flickr started in 2006 for me and now they have sorted out the look and the usability of the site, I am getting back to using it more. Tumblr I use as a scrapbook, moodboard and ideas archive. Twitter I am starting to use more but really just getting my head around it even now.

I think the biggest thing for photographers to get sorted is their own website. Get a decent platform for it which for me is WordPress. Then make it look nice but don’t over spec it. It’s all about your work, not fancy animations, complicated navigation or anything too clever. People want to see images and to get to see a decent cross-section of your work as quickly as possible, in a mobile and web-friendly way.

SNS should then relate back to your website. I post links on FB and link to my work on my sites. That generates traffic and sows links out there on the web and the amount of links a search engine sees to your site helps it bump you up the table for page ranking. As for what to post on SNS, give people something. It should not all be ‘me, me me’ and really not, on FB for instance, be about ‘come and like my page’. You have to find a unique voice for yourself.

Today is different. We have to be photographers and agent, promoter and marketer. That’s hard to do for long without occasionally disappearing up your own backside. Find a way to promote yourself that also educates or enriches the people seeing your posts. That’s really where the photography teaching has helped me; I like passing things on, helping people enjoy their photography more. A lot of what I post on SNS is slanted that way.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Yumi by Alfie Goodrich

How does your Japanorama website tie into the rest of your endeavors? 

Japanorama was the first domain I had outside of one in my own name. I bought it way back, at first just because I liked the name and it was a domain I used to point to my pics of Japan. When we moved here, I changed the site to be something the reflected more of everything I do: the teaching, the work, stuff not shot by me but done by people I teach etc. It’s also the umbrella name under which I do business in Japan.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Mari by Alfie Goodrich

Would you speak a bit about your self-published magazine Stekki and what the process of putting together a magazine is like?

Stekki came about purely as a way to help students and workshop attendees get the experience of seeing their work in a magazine form. On workshops we’d shoot to a brief of making features to fill pages. People would need to think about a cover, double-page spreads, remembering to shoot vertical and horizontal. I get to see my work in magazines. That’s nice for me. I wanted to share that experience and make a magazine for people.

Plus, the discipline of shooting for the page, pre-visualising for the page, seeing someone edit your shots down and then fit them on to a page… this is good for people who are learning about photography. I’m shortly about to start designing and producing all the content for a real magazine here in Tokyo. That will help me move Stekki one step closer to being in print, which I think we can realistically see happening in 2016.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Momo Shoko Yoyogi by Alfie Goodrich

As well as shooting, you teach photography in Tokyo. What are a few of the things that photographers can expect to learn in your workshops and photowalks? Are there any less known locations that you can recommend for photographers who are making a visit to Japan?

I help people see. I help them pre-visualise, become visual literate as much as anything we do technically or physically with the camera. We’ll always work to some kind of brief or project and since the Stekki magazine idea came along, very often we’ll work together on shooting pages for that. I do one-to-one lessons, courses and workshops and at any one time there’ll be something going on across a few genres of photography, from fashion to landscape, travel to documentary or street. I tend to get off the beaten track a lot and actually earlier this year made a Google Map with more than 100 places and walks on it, each with a photo. You can find that here: http://japanorama.co.uk/2015/04/30/a-photographers-map-of-tokyo-japan/

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Mone Ohashi Tripych by Alfie Goodrich

You do a lot of location portraiture, what’s your chosen lighting system for working in these urban areas?

I’ve used lots of things and still do have a real mix of stuff. Recently I tried out the Profoto B2 kit for a few months and may well end up getting one. I like their B1 lights a lot as well. No cables. Huge benefit when working outdoors. I have an Einstein or two and the Paul Buff ring flash, which is fun. I still use a lot of small speed lights and radio triggers as well. I like the flexibility of clamping them onto a fence, railing or somewhere it would be hard to use stands or large lights.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Meijijingu by Alfie Goodrich

Does Japan have similar permitting issues as the US or the UK when it comes to commercial photography?

Japan is pretty good for photography. The main thing is about tripod and stand usage. There are plenty of areas in the cities where you can get away with light on a stand though. But the speed lights come in useful a lot for ‘gun and run’ type shoots.

The police never really bother me. It’s more the private security guards or guards that work for a building. If they think you are on their land, which at times can be hard to figure out, then they can be very persistent and annoying. Temples and shrines anywhere in Japan are pretty much either, ‘yes we are cool with you but it’s on a permission only basis’ or, ‘no, you can’t shoot commercially here’. They are usually pretty approachable and the ones that will let you shoot will usually turn around a request for permission in two weeks or less. Some even use email now! But be prepared in Japan for the surprise of how popular the fax machine still is.

Playing the ‘stupid foreigner’ card obviously is something I will do occasionally. I’m well mannered and polite but if I want a shot than I will try, within reason, plenty of things to try and get it. If pretending not to understand the rules is one, I’ll do it.

Tokyo Drifter: Alfie Goodrich on working in Japan

Mari by Alfie Goodrich

What was the experience of shooting Prince William, Duke of Cambridge like?

The experience of a lifetime. I mean, whatever you think about the royal family, being on an assignment with any super-VVIP level people is amazingly interesting: the organisation, the pace, the things you get to see and experience.? I spent four days with the Duke, as the British Embassy in Tokyo’s official photographer of his visit. I travelled in the convoy, went to all of the engagements in Tokyo and up in Tohoku. In four days I photographed the Duke, the Prime Minister, the Emperor and Empress, a Crown Prince and assorted other dignitaries. Not just from the press-pack perspective but as an embedded photographer. That opportunity doesn’t come around very often.

The Tohoku and Fukushima parts of the trip were especially poignant for me. My wife is from Fukushima and the majority of her family still live there. So when I got a chance, at the end of the trip, to speak with the Duke, I thanked him for taking the time to visit Fukushima. Lots of people had come out to see him. It meant a lot to them that someone like him would visit there home. Oh, and my two sons still hate me for the fact that – with the Duke – I managed to get inside the driver’s compartment of the bullet-train. You can only really do that if you have a Prince to get you in the door.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Facade Lift: Abandoned Commercial Building Reborn as Mixed-Use

10 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

before and after

Finding new life as a combination of retail and housing space, this stunning structure’s new look works with the existing building envelope and floor plates while breaking down visible divisions between stories.

new building facade

before after side view

Located in Bangkok, Thailand, the refab is now home to four siblings above and their family-run jewelry store on the first floor.

converted store design ground

converted multistory mixed use

Idin Architects (photos by Spaceshift) kept the framework, difficult to remove as it touches adjacent structures, but renovated the interior and added an entirely new facade that seems to defy floors as it wraps up the front.

new facade

converted living room area

Each family occupies two stories of the 7-floor building, with elevators connecting all of the different units in the back and an enclosed rooftop patio above.

converted light well space

converted growing tree

A central lightwell (occupied in part by a slow-growing tree) and other internal features reconnect the different are as well while maintaining separation and privacy for each family unit.

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7 Tips for Better Commercial Food Photography

14 Sep

Earlier this summer, I was awarded a dream photo shoot to photograph chocolate chip cookies for my local grocery store. What sounded like a simple job at first, ended up being more challenging than expected, and in this article, I’ll walk through the process of approaching a commercial food photo shoot for a real client, with seven key tips to keep in mind.

Select your gear

One of your best friends in food photography is a macro lens, as it lets you zoom-in and capture small details and perspectives, that your client’s camera phone can’t. In a day where just about everyone has the ability to take pretty good food photos with their cell phone, it’s important to always create photos that your client couldn’t easily capture themselves using low level gear. Personally, I always photograph food with two camera bodies (a Canon 5D Mark III and Canon 6D) and two lenses (24-70mm f/2.8 and a 100mm f/2.8 macro lens).

Lighting-wise, you can easily use reflectors and natural lighting if it’s at your disposal, but I prefer a simple and cheap off-camera flash setup consisting of a Canon 580 EXII Speedlight flash, Yongnuo wireless flash triggers, a simple lighting stand, and a shoot through umbrella. My lighting setup is in the diagram below.

Food photography tips

Depending on what kind of food photography quality you’re aiming for, it may also be wise to invest in a food stylist. In this case, I did not use one, but started to wish I did at certain key moments, which I’ll address later.

Set up the shot

Generally speaking, food photography can be done just about anywhere, but you should always check with your client to see if they have a preference of shooting on site in a particular location, or if they want you to conduct the shoot in your space. In this case, the latter scenario applied. Since the photo style we were going for would be pretty cropped and zoomed in, I didn’t need a fancy kitchen or dining room setup. But I would need a variety of surfaces and props to enhance those heavily cropped images.

Tip #1: Understand the client’s photo needs

There tend to be two main scenarios when it comes to food photography. Sometimes the client will have a menu of dishes prepared and you need to shoot as many as possible in a given time frame, OR the client has one particular dish or menu item that they want highlighted. This assignment falls into the latter category, as the whole point was to take images of one particular item: an extraordinary large chocolate chip cookie, dubbed “The Cookie.”

My local grocery store had spent a year experimenting in the kitchen to come up with a recipe for a gigantic chocolate chip cookie, and they needed photos of the product to help with promotional marketing. These photos in particular had a very specific purpose of being blown up into large decals and posters, that would be plastered on walls and windows throughout the store, so the highest resolution photos would be needed.

Food photography tips

Tip #2: Research with Pinterest

After understanding the client’s basic photo needs, I always conduct research on Pinterest to get inspired and visually identify patterns among other similar photo shoots. While many clients encourage photographers to add their own twist or dose of creativity, it’s also a good idea to have a sense of traditional ways that others have executed similar photo shoots, in case your client ends up wanting a more traditional image. A quick search for “chocolate chip cookies” on Pinterest gave me a slew of ideas on different ideas to effectively photograph, “The Cookie.”

Tip #3: Use a variety of surfaces

Per the researched examples that I had found, plus my personal approach to food photography, I set out to shoot these cookies using three main surfaces: a ceramic plate on a granite countertop, a wooden cutting board, and the white paper napkins and packaging that came with each cookie. The purpose was to offer the client a variety of surfaces and textures to choose from, in addition to a variety of implied settings in which “The Cookie” might be consumed.

Food photography tips

Tip #4: Incorporate people and action into the scene

The next photographic approach I took involved having a human model interact with my photo subject. Incorporating a human element, either by simply including a body part such as a hand holding the cookie, or a partially eaten cookie, gives the photo subject a sense of purpose and utility that the client might find helpful. It also adds a sense of scale – important to show the size of “The Cookie”.

Food photography tips

Tip #5: Use ingredients and pairings

Pretty much every food has a logical pairing, such as white wine and fish, beer and burgers, and milk and cookies. Instead of just focusing on one component, why not set the scene by introducing a natural pairing to the photo subject? This not only sets the scene, but it can also help provide scale, in this case showing how large “The Cookie” is compared to a glass of milk.

Food photography tips

Tip #6: Be open to feedback and further collaboration

After going through the above scenarios, and putting together a first batch of photos for client feedback, I was a bit surprised when they replied saying, “These are great, but not quite fitting our ideal vision.” Luckily, I asked for feedback early in the shoot and was able to collaborate further with the client to hone in on what they were actually looking for, which were photos more to the tune of this:

Food photography tips

While the client’s initial instructions were to produce a variety of photos of the cookie, like the ones I first delivered, it took an extra conversation with them to realize that there were two main points they really wanted to illustrate:

  1. Size mattered: Since “The Cookie” was truly large, similar in size to that of a DVD, we really needed to emphasize its huge size.
  2. Have to see the goo: The selling point of “The Cookie” is the super gooey melted chocolate center of each cookie.

With these two points really emphasized, the resulting images ended up being purely macro shots, but the challenge was capturing the gooey melted chocolate centers. This is when a food stylist probably would have come in handy, but through trial and error, I was able to use my oven and microwave to re-create the melted chocolate look in my own kitchen.

Tip #7: Find the finished product and document it!

Whenever you perform photography services for a client, make every effort to get your hands on the final product that has your photo(s) in use. Having proof of your published photos is excellent for building your portfolio and credibility as a photographer, not to mention it just feels really good to see your images blown up on the side of a building.

Food photography tips

The final product: my photos used in decals on the side of a building.

Conclusion

Do you have any other tips or approaches for tackling commercial food photography jobs? Let me know in the comments below!

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Pop photo: the commercial and fashion work of Caesar Lima

06 Sep

Commercial portraitist and product photographer Caesar Lima is absolutely fascinated by imaging technologies. His earnest enthusiasm for photography and the business side of the market have helped him stay one step ahead of his peers, and his ability to adapt to digital trends early on has helped keep his studio at the forefront of conceptual advertising. Find out more about him in our Q+A. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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4 Things Commercial Photographers Need to Discuss with Their Small Business Clients

20 Apr
Lead architects of a high-end design firm.

Lead architects of a high-end design firm.

Providing successful images for a business can be very rewarding, especially when it’s for a budding business that you get to witness growing. While all businesses, big and small, essentially have the same demands, a small business is most likely still learning how to work with various professionals and creating their processes as they go. Diving into a project with a small business can lead to lots of time and money being wasted if terms and project details are not discussed openly, early on. The following are some key factors to discuss with your small business client during an initial consultation so that conflicts can be avoided down the line:

1. Brand

Large family-run urban farm.

Large family-run urban farm

While we are hired in part because of the individual style that we have developed over time, a business’s brand is the first thing that needs to come across to their audience. When working with a small business especially, the branding should be clearly defined in order to be able to provide images that will be a great benefit to them. Do they have certain color palettes they work with? Are their graphics portraying a more formal brand, or a very casual brand? Are they nature-oriented, or do they work in traditional office spaces? What clientele are they catering to? All of these are questions that should be addressed in the initial consultations. A small business may still be developing their brand or creating a branding package, so without a brand to guide the images, there may be a need for updated photos once the brand is clearly defined. Expressing this to a client will not only help them understand that professional photography is an investment intended to last a long time, but it will also show them that you are keeping their best interest in mind for their long-term success.

2. Budget

Small businesses will typically have very low budgets, so the decision to invest in professional photography services will be a big one for them. Regardless of the cost for your services, there is likely to be very little (if any) wiggle room in their budget allowance. Being aware, and respectful, of the client’s budget restrictions will not only help ensure that there is less run-around in the planning stages, but it will also give the client more confidence that you are an ally. If you offer packages geared towards commercial work, consider having several options to select from, or to use as a kick-off for budget discussions. Often a custom quote is required depending on their specific needs, but some packages to give the client a ballpark idea of pricing can let them know what they can expect to spend.

Independent financial advisor.

Independent financial advisor

3. Timeline

Depending on how experienced your small business client is, their timeline for getting final images may not be very realistic. This is where it’s your job to educate clients on your process and, more importantly, on your specific ability to turn around jobs in a time crunch. Knowing their expectations about timing and delivery will be vital in creating a quote, coordinating any vendors (venue, props, assistants), and making sure that the client gets their images in time to use them.

Do they require any extensive editing techniques or talent that requires outsourcing? Did they request a location or backdrop that requires reservations and a long wait for booking? Will they need models, and if so, do they have specifics in mind? Are they planning on using these images for a specific event, or marketing campaign that has a set date? Which leads to the final factor to keep in mind…

Home-based food business products.

Home-based food business products

4. Usage

Many folks will assume that if they hire you to take photos, they then get to keep the photos and do as they wish with them. In reality, commercial work is generally very specific about what usage is permitted. If they are planning to use the photos on a product label, do you get any royalty from that product sale? If they are hiring you because of a large print marketing campaign, can they then use the images in email campaigns several years down the line? Are you granting them use for a certain amount of time, or can they use these images forever? Once you turn over the images, are they allowed to do any alterations to them?

While there is no one answer to these questions, be sure to discuss the planned use of these images and to clearly specify it in a contract. Both parties need to be in agreement with what is decided, and having this discussion up front will once again show your client that you value your work and intend to be completely open with them about terms.

Owner of a co-working space.

Owner of a co-working space

Although there are many factors to discuss with your client at the beginning of a project, these four points will help get the basic information clarified, and get both parties on the same page. These discussion points will also go a long way to helping you create a quote for them that is accurate and all-inclusive; avoiding time-consuming confusion farther into the project.

Do you have any additional points of conversation that are a must for initial client consultations? Please share in the comments below.

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A light touch: Dean Bradshaw’s commercial and personal portraiture

22 Mar

‘Conceptual’ and ‘commercial’ photography are styles that relatively few are able to achieve success in, especially at the same time. But Dean Bradshaw’s intellectual and humorous approach to advertorial work sets his portfolio far above that of the typical commercial photographer. Take a look at a selection of his imagery and find out a few insights behind his success in our Q+A. See gallery

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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FAA proposes regulations for commercial drone usage

21 Feb

The FAA’s plan to regulate drone usage has been a long running cause of concern among enthusiasts and those hoping to use UAVs for commercial purposes. Thus far speculation has pegged the budding regulations as unnecessarily restrictive, but the new officially revealed FAA proposal shows those concerns to largely be unfounded. Read more

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Commercial Break: 8 Abandoned TV Stations & Studios

16 Feb

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

abandoned TV station SR Gothenburg 1
The golden age of television has long since passed, especially for these 8 abandoned TV stations whose cameras have permanently put on their lens caps.

abandoned TV station SR Gothenburg 3

abandoned TV station SR Gothenburg 4

The Sveriges Radio TV building in Gothenburg, Sweden opened in 1970 – the same year Swedish TV began broadcasting in color. We’re assuming the novelty wore off, as by the end of the decade the building had been abandoned to the depredations of squatters, salvagers and the unavoidable swing of the wrecking ball.

abandoned TV station SR Gothenburg 5

abandoned TV station SR Gothenburg 2

How Swede is was, now not so much. Kudos to Flickr user Rolfen who visited the decrepit SR television studios (or “TV-house”, as he puts it) in May of 2009.

KVVV-vvv…

abandoned TV station KVVV Texas 1

abandoned TV station KVVV Texas 2

abandoned TV station KVVV Texas 3

Based in Friendswood, Texas and broadcasting to the metro Houston area, KVVV-TV was an independent television station that opened in February of 1968. A money-losing proposition from the get-go, the station fired most of its staff by the end of ’68 and finally shut down entirely on August 31st of 1969. The station may not have broadcasted for long but its studio building is still hanging in there, though after decades of vandalism hanging’s probably too good for it. Full props to urban explorers UER for recently posting some screencaps from their must-see video of the extremely decrepit ex-station.

Southern Discomfort

abandoned TV station WTVY 1

abandoned TV station WTVY 2

WTVY is a CBS-affiliated television station from Dothan, Alabama, that began broadcasting on channel 4 in 1960. In 1978 the station moved to new digs in Bethlehem, Florida where its 2,035 ft tall transmission tower is still the tallest in the state. Meanwhile, WTVY’s old studio building and much-faded kitschy Sixties sign molder away, slowly succumbing to the relentless march of scrub brush and kudzu.

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Commercial Break 8 Abandoned Tv Stations Studios

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