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Architecture - Research

Early examples of architectural photography

Nicéphore Niépce

‘View from the Window at Le Gras’, the oldest surviving photograph, was created in 1826 or 1827 by French inventor Nicéphore Niépce using the heliography process he invented around 1822. From a high window, the photograph depicts parts of his estate, Le Gras, in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, as well as the surrounding countryside. The exposure is thought to have taken anywhere between eight hours and several days. A heliograph is a semaphore system that signals by flashes of sunlight reflected by a mirror. The flashes are produced by momentarily pivoting the mirror, or by interrupting the beam with a shutter.

Niépce photographed the scene with a camera obscura focused on a pewter plate coated in Bitumen of Judea, a naturally occurring asphalt. The bitumen hardened in the brightly lit areas, but remained soluble in the dimly lit areas and could be washed away with a mixture of lavender oil and white petroleum. A very long exposure in the camera was required. Sunlight strikes the buildings from opposite directions, implying an eight-hour exposure, which has become the accepted estimate. A researcher who studied Niépce's notes and recreated his processes discovered that the exposure must have lasted several days.

Eugène Atget

Eugène Atget was a French photographer best known for his images of Paris' architecture and streets. In the late 1880s, he began photographing and provided studies for painters, architects, and stage designers. In 1898, Atget began photographing Paris with a large format view camera to capture the city in detail. His photographs, many of which were taken at dawn, are notable for their diffuse light and wide perspectives that create a sense of space and ambience. They also document Paris's rapid change; many of the areas photographed by Atget were soon to be demolished as part of massive modernization projects.

Atget created all of his own photographic prints using a technique in which light-sensitive paper was printed in natural light while in contact with the glass negative. The printing process continued until Atget determined that the image was of sufficient density.

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Architecture - Contact Sheets

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Moving Image - Final Video

Techniques used - Panning, zoom, pull focus, tracking, low angle, slow motion

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Architecture - Edited Exterior Shots

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Architecture - Practice Shoot

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Architecture - Preparation

When I heard the name of the brief my mind immediately went back to a church with unique white pointy spires on top that I had seen while on the train up to Fife. After finding out it was at the Linlithgow stop I did some research, finding out it was St. Michaels Parish Church right in front of Linlithgow Palace. 

I contacted the church through their website requesting photographic permission to shoot inside the building. I chose to shoot on a Saturday as the weather looks most promising and I didn’t want to interrupt their Sunday service. I also made sure that no service would be on Saturday by checking their calendar.

For viewpoints, I found that the road leading up to the church and the graveyard would give best access for a full scale shot of the building. This may change, if I’m not allowed access to the graveyard at the time but I’ll work around this. 

The website was even more helpful by adding an architecture section explaining the history of the church and how it was built, along with a ground floor plan.

Inspiration Photos

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Architecture - Plan

Date - Saturday, 10th June

Time - TBC (either 2pm or 8.30pm)

Location - St. Michaels Parish Church, Linlithgow

Transport - Car/Train

Weather - Sunny and clear

Equipment - Nikon D5600, Tripod, 55mm lens

Lighting - Natural outdoor light

Subjects - Church exterior, unique spikes at top, inside structure

Map of Lighting

Light direction shooting at 1pm (sun transit)

Light direction shooting at 8.30pm (golden hour)

There would be more risk but higher payoff shooting at golden hour, as the sun sets at 9.50pm only giving about an hour to shoot outside. I would like the golden hour effect but i’ll decide closer to shooting day what I choose to do.

Map of Location

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Graded Unit - Costs

x1 1940s hat costume - £15.90

x7 Train tickets - £47.50

x1 Car petrol - £10

x6 Subway tickets - £10.50

x1 Rymans A3 display folder - £9.99

x5 Deadly digital A3 prints - £45

Total spent on production & printing

£138.89

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Graded Unit - Colour Rating Contact Sheets

Key

Green - Good composition, lighting, focus

Purple - Good but not clear on theme

Red - Poor focus, bad lighting

Blue - Selected final

Shoot One

Shoot Two

Shoot Three

Shoot Four

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Graded Unit - Printing

When thinking about the layout of my prints I thought making them all portrait would give a more cohesive final display. I also ensured the photos I selected all had one primary model as the focus to kind of tell a story through time focused on certain people.

 I decided to get my prints done at Deadly Digital in Partick as this was my cheapest option for the best quality. For travel I used the train and got off at Partick. It was pretty easy to find as the bright blue units stood out and was only a 5 min walk from the station. I got a student discount taking my 5 A3 sized prints down to £45. For paper type I chose to use Hahnemuhle studio lustre 250 gsm as it was the cheapest option and I didn’t want a glossy effect for the types of images I was choosing to print. 

For presentation I chose to use an A3 folder to display images in a flip book style. I managed to get one at Ryman's.

Map of Location

Photos Chosen for Print

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Graded Unit - Shoot Two Recce Shots

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Graded Unit - Inspiration for Shoot Three & Four (2000s - 2020s)

Markus Klinko

Born in 1961, Switzerland being of French, Italian, Jewish, and Hungarian descent, Klinko spent his early years training to become a classical harp soloist.  After a hand injury, Klinko decided to become a fashion photographer and retired from his international concert and recording career. During that time, he met Indrani, who later became a regular collaborator in her role as his studio's digital post production artist and photo editor.

While working at the London Sunday Times, Isabella Blow noticed Klinko's photography and commissioned cover stories from the young photographer. Ingrid Sischy of Interview magazine engaged Klinko for numerous shoots around the same time. Iman and David Bowie then followed, providing the aspiring photographer the opportunity to capture them for their respective book (I am Iman) and album covers (Heathen)..

He went on to design some of the most recognisable album covers of all time, including Beyonce's Dangerously in Love and Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi. The coffee table book ICONS contains several of Klinko's iconic celebrity images (Perseus). Many prints from the book were shown in an art exhibit at the Lincoln Center in New York, and his work has subsequently been featured in galleries and museums all around the world.

Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith, AKA mattko, has been attending raves since the late 80s, but his career photographing them didn’t begin until rave was criminalised by the Criminal Justice Act in 1994. “It was a direct response to our freedom being criminalised and restricted that motivated me, and it still is now.” Originally, Smith didn't set out to be a rave photographer; his camera abilities and position in the renowned UK rave culture of the late 1980s and early 1990s just made him one.

 Smith began photographing indoor events for himself and a variety of music publications as the scene grew from unlicensed events in West Country farmland to clubs throughout Bristol and Manchester in the 1990s and early 2000s, capturing the intensity, creativity, debauchery, and unmitigated joy of the club scene.

Now, more than 200 of Smith’s images from 2000-2005 have been compiled into the book Full On. Non Stop, All Over. Published by U.K. imprint TRIP Publishing and featuring an introduction by legendary electronic world writer Simon Reynolds, the photo book captures the rave scene in the brief moment before smartphones invaded our pockets, brains and venues, forever altering the way we experience the dancefloor and the present moment itself.

Ray H. Mercado

Ray H. Mercado is an urban explorer and self-taught photographer residing in New York City. Ray is mostly interested in urban, architectural, and street photography. He enjoys wandering the streets of New York in search of spectacular street scenes.

Mercado demonstrates a remarkable eye for detail when capturing everyday life. He has an uncanny ability to capture sights from daily commutes. "I capture street art in its realist form," Mercado's comment alone may be called his genre, along with a mix of documentary and street photography.

Mercado has photographed the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement from the front lines, as shown on his Instagram account @raylivez. Mercado's photographs capture the raw and best of America, with people of all races working together for a common goal.

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Graded Unit - Inspiration for Shoot One & Two (1940s - 1980s)

Robert Capa

Robert Capa was an American-Hungarian photographer who captured five wars over the course of his lifetime. Born Endre Friedmann on October 22, 1913 in Budapest, Hungary, Capa left his home country at the age of 18, finding work as a photojournalist in post-World War I Berlin. During this time, he concealed his Jewish heritage with a pseudonym based on his childhood nickname “Cápa,” or “Shark.” 

Throughout his life, he covered many important historical events, including the rise of Soviet Communism, the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and a full survey of the politics and atrocities of World War II. Capa's photographs are recognized across the globe for their critical role in shaping public remembrance of these events. In 1947, he co-founded Magnum Photos in Paris with fellow photographers David Seymour, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and George Rodger. Capa died tragically in 1954 after stepping on a landmine while documenting the First Indochina War in Thai Binh, Vietnam.

Robert Capa made photographs that achieved their exceptionally powerful effect through his strong connection to and affection for people. This attitude, and his use of the small 35-millimeter camera, allowed him to approach his subjects and throw himself into the action as no one else. The result was a breakthrough in the history of photojournalism.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer who helped establish photojournalism as an art form through his humane, spontaneous photographs. Cartier-Bresson was born in 1908, and educated in a village near Paris. In 1927–28, he studied in Paris with André Lhote, a Cubist-influenced artist and critic. Lhote instilled in him a lifelong interest in painting, which was crucial in the development of his vision. Cartier-Bresson enrolled at the University of Cambridge in 1929 to study literature and painting.

In 1940, he was drafted into the French army's film and photography unit and was taken prisoner by the Germans the following year. He escaped after three years in prison and began working for the French underground. In 1943, he completed a series of portraits of artists such as Matisse, Bonnard, and Braque. Cartier-Bresson photographed the occupation and liberation of France in 1944 and 1945. He co-founded the Magnum agency in 1947 with Robert Capa, David Seymour, and George Rodger. Bresson went on to spend the next twenty years travelling the world.

Henri Cartier-Bresson revolutionised photography with a new aesthetic and practise, pioneered modern photojournalism, and influenced generations of followers. In all of his work, he strived for a perfect balance of content and formal composition, and he lived and worked by his mantra of 'the decisive moment,' which he defined as 'the simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second of the significance of an event as well as the precise organisation of forms.'

Bruce Davidson

Bruce Davidson is an American photographer born on September 5th,1933 in Oak Park, IL. He began taking photographs from the age of 10 and had a darkroom built in his single mother’s home. Davidson went on to attend the Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale University, where he developed an interest in the work of W. Eugene Smith and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Known for his images of marginalised communities and individuals. Davidson's work is marked by a fearlessness and a lack of moral judgement, as well as sympathy for those who may be hostile to the general population. Some of the artist's most famous photographs depict scenes and portraits of people riding the New York subway system in the early 1980s, when it was extremely dangerous to ride, covered in graffiti, and full of trash, and were compiled in the well-known photo book Subway (1986).

Davidson would become a widely exhibited and published photographer, and eventually a contributing member of the famed photographic cooperative Magnum Photos. Today, his works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. Davidson lives and works in New York, USA.

Derek Ridgers

Ridgers was born in 1962 in Chiswick, West London. Unlike many of his colleagues, he did not grow up dreaming of becoming a photographer. Ridgers attended the Ealing School of Art and was trained as a graphic artist; during his time there (1967–71), Freddie Mercury was a fellow student. Ridgers loved music and spent many nights listening to live performances in Chiswick and other nearby neighbourhoods. Most of his photos from later life can be somehow associated with the clubs and music scenes he was a part of during the late 60s.

Ridgers documented the British style and music scene as the Punk rock era began to develop in the late 1970s. A founder of the straight-up style of photography, his observational approach to photographing London’s Youth enabled him to capture skinheads, punks, ravers, goth’s and fetishists as well as every hybrid style that has developed from these various subcultures. Derek Ridgers has published numerous books on his extensive subculture archive, some of which now have a cult status.

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Graded Unit - Evaluation

The graded unit or 'personal project" is a brief where we need to produce 10 final digital images and 5 final prints all relating to a theme. As there were endless possibilities for themes, the first that came to my mind was creating different time period shoots. I had the idea of incorporating something i'm passionate about with this idea.

Some ideas I came up with were recreating influential album covers or movie posters, an astronomy theme shooting stargazers and enthusiasts and culture through traditional clothing. The initial idea I decided to go with was incorporating fashion with a train theme to show how train travel has evolved since the 1930s/40s.

This proved harder than I thought when actually planning locations and sourcing models - I can't afford regular online models, my friends are limited with time and travel and location wise I was very restricted. I wanted the images to feel somewhat realistic. So I amended this by changing my theme to centre around travel in general, and with editing I was able to create whatever effect I needed for each period.

Initially I divided my project into 5 shoots for decades skipping 20 years at a time; 1940s, 60s, 80s, 2000s and the 2020s. This ended up being a bust as two models became unavailable for the project and could only model after the submission deadline.

I compensated for this by skipping the 60s shoot and gathering a new model for the 80s shoot to fill in. This worked in my favour and it gave me one of my favourite shots I’ve taken so far.

Location wise, the original plan was for my 60s shoot to be held within the transport museum as I thought the old vehicles would suit the time period well. Upon visiting to gather my recce shots I learned all the vehicles were from the 1700s - 1940s, also the background had fake shops that looked considerably older than a 60s time period.

I decided to instead use this location for my 40s wartime shoot, focusing my two models around a car built around the late 30s. This ended up working really well and I was even able to use one of the fake shop windows for my composition, creating separation between the two models.

More complications arose when my original plan for the 2000s shoot was going to be shot in Bogside at abandoned railway tracks. When I was struggling to see what this idea represented and was unable to find access to the site I found inspiration at my local cinema. The sign has been up for two decades and still feels nostalgic, which is what I wanted to create with the editing. My friend Kelsey helped me out and we decided to incorporate her car since I wanted to use an active mode of travel for that time period.

I then had the issue of unfocused images in my 2020s shoot, and by this point I was ripping my hair out as the location (Wemyss Bay) isn’t the easiest to get to unless I'm already near the west coast. I took my time with the reshoot, focusing each shot manually as I did not trust my cameras autofocus at all by this point.

Editing was another mammoth task, one I’m not even sure I’m fully done with. I think I’ve tried at least 6/7 different edits on each individual photo with some retouching. The task of trying to edit each shoot in their own specific time period was very difficult, I wanted to perfect it but I didn’t want to rely too heavily on pre-sets.

I ended up using a sepia tone pre-set as a guide for my 40s shoot, which helped a lot. 80s shoot was so difficult to get right, I wanted a film style look but with a twinge more contrast to make sure it’s not too flat and uninteresting. 2000s editing was quite tricky as it’s hard to replicate a time period that doesn’t look super old in photographs, yet doesn’t look too modern. With all these older time period shoots it was a task as I’m shooting with a DSLR and not a film camera.

I feel Lightroom has remained my favourite program to use for importing, editing and exporting as I feel it’s most user friendly for me. This project was definitely the hardest brief I've completed this year, everything felt so stressful and time consuming. The only slight relief I got was when I was able to edit in post and I could realise they had potential. I felt good knowing that when I decided to share my images, people seemed to respond well to them.

If I were to complete this brief again with the same theme, I'd look to hire professional models that would reliably be on time and not drop out of shoots. I’d also get my recce shots well before I plan to shoot as it’d save time having to relocate and reconsider where I'll be shooting that day.

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Unseen - Evaluation

What was the project theme and what did you think of it? 

The theme of this project was photographing objects under controlled conditions to observe how we are able to capture them in certain ways (cross polarisation, macro etc.)

What part of the project did you enjoy the most/found most interesting (making the photographs? Optimising images? printing?) 

Capturing and optimising the photographs was my favourite part, this was a really fun brief and it felt like each different method of shooting was a science experiment. 

What new techniques have you experienced?  

High speed flashes, cross polarisation photography, stacking macro lenses.

What technique would you like to develop further? 

I would like to experiment more with high speed flashes to replicate an advertising photoshoot as I think my shot looked similar to an Apple advert.

What do you feel is the most successful part of your project and why? 

I think editing was the most successful part as my images didn’t need much.

Did you encounter any problems in your project?  

I was struggling to keep the whole background black shooting cross polarisation.

How did you learn from them and how did they affect your final images?

I didn’t learn much but it added extra light that I had to tone down using black sliders and shadows on Lightroom.

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Recycle - Evaluation

What was the project theme and what did you think of it? 

The project theme was recycle, where I had to find old, discarded or used materials to build a set, then using old objects to photograph.

What part of the project did you enjoy the most/found most interesting (making the photographs? Optimising images? printing?) 

I found using the torch to paint light in images the most interesting part.

What new techniques have you experienced? 

I learned the painting with light technique.

What technique would you like to develop further? 

I’d like to experiment with painting with light more.

Which photographers did you research throughout this project? 

Harold Ross, Peter Zentjens and Josh Caudwell

How have they influenced your photographs? 

Harold Ross is a pioneer of the technique so I mostly took inspiration from his images, trying to replicate the nostalgic feel and the soft lighting.

What do you feel is the most successful part of your project and why? 

I think choosing my objects was the most successful part as they compliment each other tonally.

Did you encounter any problems in your project?

Editing the different areas of light to make a final image was tricky when I started with too many layers, I was able to cut this down to 3 layers and it became a lot more simple to work with.

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Recycle - Compositing Image