Photoshoots

Manchester  

Architectural Photography
While I have been visiting various cities for university open days I have been taking my camera and shooting while I walk around the city. I have been interested in close up architectural photography and thought where better than a selection of large cities to practice shooting in this style.
Large cities are perfect for this style of work as they are built up of a huge amount of interesting patterns, lines, textures and with all of these overlapping and collaborating in the skyline its a beautiful thing. 
I walk around the cities and look up toward the skyline to see if there is anything interesting to photograph. In this case I was in Manchester, I found quite a nice amount of subject matter while walking around mainly quite grand older buildings not the modern contemporary buildings that I had commonly seen in the work I was drawing my inspiration from. 
I like the older buildings, the brick work holds more personality the colours are deeper and earthier giving the image a richer aesthetic. I do still like the more monotone modern builds, the lines and patterns are cleaner giving the images a purer look. Both work well when used in a collection. 
The main differences I have seen between older and more modern buildings is minimalism. Older buildings will have more extravagant brick work and windows lots of pains in where as a more modern build will have plainer brick work with larger clear windows with little to no pains. 

While walking through the city I came across the town hall. This crazy beautifully detailed building looked like a Hogwarts Castle mixed with steam punk. The passage way between the town hall and the adjacent building was amazing for subject matter. The side of the building full of windows, the beautiful spires of the town hall and the Hogwartsesc walk ways all worked together perfectly. This is where I got most of the shots from the day.    

When we were leaving we had time to kill in the train station, I decided to take some photos of the steel beam that supported the roof, I hadn't changed my settings from earlier so I got these dark mysterious images with the light creeping in through the holes in walls and the grubby clear roof. The roof was the main light source so the light tapered out very quickly leaving the roofing and certain girders illuminated and the rest of the image left in darkness. This is a technique I have used in my night shoots and ties in nicely.  

I used a Canon 500D with a 70-300 lens.

This was a good shoot, there was a lot of great and diverse subject matter. The contacts are below.  

 Brighton  

This shoot was done on the streets of Brighton. The Architectural shots were done in the city centre and the night shots were taken on the see front. 

The Architecture was quite noticeably more modern in Brighton or at least the buildings that I photographed were compared to the work I did in Manchester. 

Modern buildings work well for this sort of photography as they usually consist of repeated patterns, lines and layers (such as balconies). The more modern buildings don't just stick to one colour they usually incorporated a wide colour pallets or at least different tones of one colour.  

I really liked the all white building (top right of the contact sheet) The simple lines its made up of and the singular colour including the sky give the image a pure simplicity but it is brought back with the grimy scum that has stained the walls. 

You can work really well with proportion when shooting architecture. The sharp corners and straight lines make it easy to get a totally central shot such as image 0321 below. The layers of the buildings split the image nicely making it easy to use the rule of thirds.  

The straight lines in the buildings are interesting as in certain images it real draws the eye across the image, making the viewer look from left to right and so on, for example 3018 which makes you focus on the far left point where both windows meet and leads you to the right. 

The night photography mainly consists of the casino on sea front. I wanted to get a shot of the whole sign but as it was so dark the camera only picked up the neon letters and I didn't want to set up my tripod as it had just started persisting it down. I really liked the portrait shot that not only picked up the sign but the neon boarder above the door. This gives the image context and secures the sign its not only a floating sign now.  

I used a Canon 500D with a 70-300 lens.

The rest of the images were snap shots that aren't really relevant. The contact sheet is below.    

 Tutbury Night Shoot 

 I did this shoot as I I had noticed the door way in the first few shots and wanted to get some shots of it. The first few shots worked so well that I decided to shoot more I walked around Tutbury looking for interesting sources of man made light.  

I spent quite a long time trying to get the right shot of this door way, I wasn't totally sure of the shot I wanted to get but after a while of trying different settings, angles, distances and with or without a tripod I realised the try of image I wanted. I wanted the door illuminated with the light tapering out down the ram into darkness. I got the shot at a few different angles portrait looking straight at the door and landscape from the other side of the road looking straight at the window on the right of the door. The images had to be sharp, really sharp the look I'm trying to go for just wont look good with out a perfectly sharp subject. The darkness and man made light seem to give the subject a certain sharpness that just looks amazing.  

I later came across the incredibly bright flood light (not sure why there was a flood light on an estate but anyway). I really liked this light as it used a different bulb to normal street lights, instead of producing an orangey yellow glow it produced a cold blue light that looked amazing against the metal pole and deep dark backdrop. The brightness of the bulb added a strange blue mark on the image that I really like. 
I went through the same process with this light taking my time, shooting from different angles, distances, shooting the light on its own against the pitch black nights sky and shooting it with the area it was illuminating (the pavement). 
I liked the straight up shots where there was a pitch black back drop and the shots showing the pavement that was being illuminated.  

I used a Canon 500D with a 70-300 lens.  


I really like the images I got from this shoot, this is a style I'm really interested in and will be furthering it. The contact sheets are bellow.

    

Bristol

This shoot was done in and around the city of Bristol, at the Bower Ashton University campus and in the centre of the city. 

I was focussing on the architectural aspect of the project in this shoot as it was mid day and wasn't the best time to capture man mad light.  

It was quite an interesting shoot as for the first time the weather had been nice, there was a blue sky with white clouds scattered across the sky instead of a flat grey sky. Although the grey sky does work as it is easy to turn white and removed letting you focus on the architecture the clouds add an extra level to the image especially when desaturated. The pure white clouds juxtaposing the now grey sky really support the darker building. 
This can be seen really well in image 403. This shot was taken outside of the university accommodation near the cities open air shopping complex. I love the juxtaposition of the strong sharp lines of the building compared to the soft fluffy clouds the two material couldn't be much more different but complement each other perfectly.  

The other structure I focused on was a large brick structure on top of a building. The structure was an abundance of shapes and lines all layered on top of each other with pops of dull tones such as the grim grey roofing and the off white relief on the top of the structure; all housed by the dark orange brick. Again supported by the cloudy sky. 

Although this was quite a short shoot as I was moving around the city focusing on other things I got some great images. The sky was perfectly soft and the sharp solid architecture juxtaposed it perfectly. The contrasting content created so strong striking images that I will be using in my final images. 

The contact sheets are bellow. 

Nestle

This shoot primarily took place around the Nestle factory with the last few images begin taken in Tutbury on the walk home. 

The Nestle factory in Hatton has undergone a huge renovation and extension in the last year. In the summer I thought the factory was a bit of an eye sore but as the nights have drawn in and it has gotten colder the factory has become  brilliant cluster of light and steam. 

This shoot was solely to capture images of man made light, that is the reason I shot at night. I may revisit in the day as there is also an good amount of architectural content around the factory. 

As the factory is 24 hours it worked perfectly, the lights were all still on but there wasn't that many cars, so I could get so beautiful solitary shots o the flood lights in the car park. 

The fact the factory had been recently renovated meant the lights in the car park and around the factory were all relatively new, bright, shiny and clean. This was perfect for the images I was going for, it helped the images crisp sharpness and the shiny ness of the stems of the lights added some beautiful reflection e.g. IMG_0516. 

I got the best images from the car park of the factory. I started shooting outside of the factory, down a small cul-de-sac. I was focusing on the company, large coloured blocks bellow it and the window around it. These all looked really cool as they were all spitting out light from the dark wall, small pockets of light contrasting the extremely dark wall looked interesting. Unfortunately these images didn't quite come out as well I had hoped, they background was to dark and the light areas weren't really interesting enough to stand alone.  

I moved from the cul-de-sac to the Nestle factory car park and continued. I switched up my setting putting the florescent light setting on. This took away the orange glow that was appearing in the images. Using the florescent setting gave the images the pure sharpness that I was really aiming for. 

I walked to the far end of the car park where it was emptiest. I spent a while shooting, creating atmospheric dark images. Trying different techniques, solitary lights, showing the illuminated area, shooting from a distance etc. 

After shooting for around an hour and a half my hands were starting to ache from the cold so I decided to start walking back. On the way back I tried shooting from the cul-de-sac but I wasn't successful but while walking into Tutbury I got some really atmospheric image using the glow from street lights and blue christmas lights. 

This shoot was very successful, I got a lot of very good quality interesting images.  

I used a Canon 500D with a 70-300 lens. I also used a small tripod.  

The contact sheets are bellow.  

Birmingham (NEC)

While helping at the Nec Skills Show I noticed this interesting shot, luckily I had my camera and took these before I had to go back to the stall after lunch. 

I love this shot, the repeated lines and shapes all layered perfectly on to of each other work so well. The dulled down tones complemented by the equally drab sky all add to the image. 

I love the simple complexity of the image, the longer you inspect the image the more you can see. There are so many little details that make the image, the repeated shapes not only used for one piece but used again in a smaller size on the other side of the image. 

Its also interesting as the image has strong leading lines leading the viewer in opposite directions. The obvious lines leading right from the top left but also the areal poles drawing the viewers upward. This engages the viewer form longer helping them explore the whole image. 

After trying the image differently, I decide a tight portrait image would work. I wanted the image to flow along the lines so by cropping the lines just before they changed direction it would show a smoother more continuos flow. This is why the larger landscape images didn't work, they showed to many directions making the flow overly disrupted. This can work on certain image but wasn't what I was looking for. 

Another reason for using a tight crop was that it gave the image good equal levels, the first most interesting first layer then the higher section of the architecture and finally the sky. This is a good use of the rule of thirds.  

I like the dull tones of this image and the equally dull sky but I would like to see how this image looks on a really nice clear day. I wonder is the image would look clearer or weather getting rid of the dull dark tones it would remove some of the focus and atmosphere from the image.  

I really wish I had shot more at this spot, it would be interesting to see this subject from different angles and see if this looked better or different. It would have been brilliant if there was a selection of structures like this but this was the only one I could see at the time.  

This shoot was good, I got one of my personal favourite images from this project but if I could do this shoot again I would shoot for longer and try different angles. 

I used a Canon 500D with a 70-300 lens. I also used a small tripod.  

The contact sheets are bellow.