Kitchen from Delaware Designers Showcase

This is the maiden voyage of one of my New Years Resolutions, To get off of my duff and blog once in a while. I am going to try and periodically post on my blog about some of the interesting things I have been working on, with a little insight on how each project was completed. To start things off I wanted to post an image that didn't quite make it into my architectural photography portfolio. There wasn't anything necessarily wrong with the image, In fact I am quite happy with it, this was more of an editorial decision since there are plenty of kitchens in my portfolio right now.

When composing this shot, I ended up moving the camera as far back as I could, and using a longer (more telephoto style lens) to keep the proportions accurate. Kitchens tend to be smaller spaces, but it is important to avoid going straight for the widest lens available. In design or architectural photography it is really important to go to great lengths to get rid of any distortion. People often think that the best way to shoot architecture is to use a really wide lens, but really the opposite is true. It is better not to get all four walls into the shot, because the proportions get all out of whack. So it is not uncommon to shoot through doorways, or have the camera all the way into the corner. I even keep a tiny tripod with me because I so commonly need to get the camera on a shelf or countertop. The tiny tripod is just one of many items that I keep with me to get the job done.

For this image I moved the kitchen table so that the camera could be all the way in the back of the room. If I moved any further back I started to see a closet and desk to the right. I ended up having to push the chandelier to the side to get it out of the shot. In the end I mixed the ambient room light and some flash to bring out the colors and texture, and voila. I went for a punchy well lit look that I thought would appeal to the kitchen designer. It is amazing how many options you have in post processing to change the look of the space. Certain uses dictate what style to use. Also the designer will often have a look they are after. In architectural photography it is common to have the practical lights on and for the room to look well lit, after all lighting design is part of the whole package. Interior design for magazines, usually has the interior practical lights off and shows no signs of lighting though it is often used.

Well, for my first blog of the season, that wasn't terribly difficult, so hopefully there will be more content in the near future. If you happen to be reading this and have any questions or suggestions, let me know I would be glad to answer. And if you are an architect or designer in Delaware, Pennsylvania or the Mid-Atlantic and need an architectural photographer I would be glad to provide a quote for your next project 

Making Sense of Image Licensing and Copyright - the very short version

    Working as a commercial photographer, I constantly bump into the same problem. Explaining to clients why image licensing is necessary and probably even the best way to do things without boring them to tears. So, here is quick and dirty attempt to break it down as quickly as I can.

    According to United States copyright law, when an artist creates a work they automatically own the copyright. One reason for this is that it insures that the image cannot be used by another individual for their personal gain without the consent of the artist. For example, an image cannot simply be grabbed from a website and used in a national advertising campaign or resold as posters. The artist has created an intellectual property and that is protected by law from being used without payment.

    Another thing that copyright law guarantees is that the artist can control the way his or her work is used. When an artist allows a work to be used for advertising, the artist still holds the copyright. What is being sold, is the right to use the image. There is no transfer of ownership. The artist then charges based specifically how the image is to be used. And since there is no transfer of ownership the image(s) are non-transferable, once purchased, they cannot be shared with other businesses, or be re-sold by anyone but the creator of the image.

    When an image is needed for advertising, a license for use is drawn up between the photographer and client that establishes how the image can be used and for how long. Pricing is established by determining how useful the image is. For example, imagine a photographer is commissioned to make an image of a hamburger for a national burger chain. The image might be the centerpiece of a national advertising that will increase sales by millions, or might be barely used for a test run of a new product in a limited release. Rather than charge the same for both, the client can purchase a license for use that covers exactly what they need. A business is able to commission works of different scope and scale and pay only for what they use.

     Now imagine the same photographer shoots a burger much like the one used in the national campaign for a local business. The image is to be used for social network and blog posts. Of course the price will be less because the usage and potential for profit is much smaller. Without the protection of copyright law and the guarantee that the artist controls the use of their image(s) the work could be resold by the local business to the national chain at great profit. This would make it impossible for photographers to price their work, because they would never know the end usage. The inevitable conclusion would be that, either, prices would be driven so low that it would no longer be possible to get quality work, or, every job would be priced as though it were for a massive campaign.

    There are a couple of exceptions. Sometimes a brand will want complete control of the images produced for their campaign, they might ask for exclusive rights. In this case they would pay more for licensing because exclusive rights would cut some of the profit potential for the artist. In rare instances the copyright can be "bought out" where the copyright is transferred to the client but typically the price is quite a bit higher because the potential that the images will be used in a large campaign is always possible. The last exception is "work for hire" when an artist is employed full-time by the client. In this case, all of the creative output of that employee as well as copyright becomes property of the employer. This does not apply to freelancers who retain all rights to the images they produce.

    Well, that's it, my fast and loose, lay-mans explanation, which is in no way intended to be an exhaustive look into licensing. It can take a little time to get your head around the idea, but it is difficult to imagine a better solution. As confusing as it can be, licensing allows photographers to work for clients of all sizes, it gives small businesses access to high-quality reasonably priced images, and it allows larger clients to pay only for what they need. 

    Thanks for visiting and reading, if you have any questions I will be happy to try and answer them. And if you get a moment and want to see my architectural or food photography stop by and take a look at my portfolio. I have a new shorter version of this same topic called Understanding Image Licensing in Two Minutes Flat, be sure to check it out.

Museum Display

A good percentage of the photographic work I do involves documenting an artist's, craftsman's or architect's work. It brings me to studios, cool buildings , businesses and if I am lucky a really great museum show from time to time. They all present different challenges to overcome. Lighting to accurately show color or volume can be a challenge, and when lights are present with reflective objects glare is always an issue. Sometimes, as important as the equipment I bring along to light can be, the equipment to block and take away light is even more. Most importantly some kind of high quality polarizing has to be done. Polarizers are filters that restrict light waves to one direction. They are very useful for removing haze. Fine art photographers most often use a circular polarizer on the cameras lens along with separate polarizers for the lights. As the circular polarizer is "tuned in" the glare and haze disappears from view. Almost any time I am shooting paintings I am using a high quality polarizer, otherwise there is a fine gray haze present that kills the colors vibrancy. There are few applications where color has to be more perfect than documenting priceless works of art.

So, recently my good friend and super talented artist Christian Kanienberg was commissioned to create some very authentic looking wood and build a display case that resembled ancient planks of wood from Midas' tomb. All of the wood had to mimic perfectly the color and texture of wood exhumed from an ancient Egyptian tomb. The project was to be installed in an exhibition based on excavating Midas's tomb. I was called because Christian needed to document his work to include in his portfolio of musuem displays.

It really is amazing work that is accurate down to the details, he even painstakingly reproduced the rust from decaying nails. The sides in the display are trompe l'oeil painting that is hard to distinguish from the wood just inches away. I brought in some supplemental lighting to soften some of the hard shadows and make everything read well to the camera. Often the challenge is to make the exhibit appear as it did to the naked eye. Modern cameras are great  but have a long way to go to approximate the human eye. So a little bit of massaging the light is sometimes required to get everything looking its best. It is interesting as well to notice how well the exhibition designers craft the space to keep you moving through the exhibit, to convey a bunch of information in a fascinating. What could be a confusing mess is designed to draw you into the space and around the exhibit so I take my time and make sure to capture the functionality of the architecture.

Photographing artwork has been a part of my business for more than 20 years. I started by documenting my own paintings. I had a color darkroom and would work with large format 4x5 sheet film to get very high resolution images for print. Over the years as digital has caught up and the functionality of the cameras has improved with tilt shift lenses I made the switch. Along the way I picked up a lot of artist friends as clients. They appreciated my perfectionism when it came to reproducing artwork. I knew what it was like to get work photographed and get less than great results, so I refined my technique and applied my painters sensitivity to light and contrast to my copy work. Over the years I have reproduced thousands of artworks for major museums, auction houses, publishers, books, catalogs, magazines, you name it. Anywhere the absolute best quality is needed.

You can find Christian at www.wishpainting.com

And if you would like to see some of my architectural photography take a look at my portfolio here.

As always if you have an architectural or design project or artwork that you need great photography for, let me know I would be glad to provide a free quote.

Happy Easter!

What could be a better subject for a food photographer. Couldn't resist getting a couple shots of our annual tradition of coloring eggs for Easter. I can't really think of a food with more color. Well, maybe some veggies like tomato's but in terms of variety this is tough to beat. It is all very inspiring, I am thinking I might make an interesting image for my food portfolio.

All of the bright colors just beg to be photographed and perhaps with a bit of creative photo cropping we will get something beautiful. All of the photographic food styling was done by my two child assistants. They insisted to be paid in candy, I let them know I don't have a special inside track with the easter bunny but it seemed to work out well for them. Over the next few days we planned to sample our colorful culinary creations but we were too sick from all of the candy. Lighting was a breeze, I like to light from down set with a nice soft light, you can find all of my food photography lighting secrets here.

If you have any questions or comments I would be glad to hear you out. If you are a chef or a restaurant or have a product that you need great food photography for, I would be glad to provide a quote. I am happy to hear about your project and it doesn't cost a thing to ask.

Happy Holidays!!!! Welcome 2016

I couldn't resist getting a shot of the famous Smith house here in Delaware. A single photo doesn't do it justice though, it really goes on and on. It has become a family tradition to visit the house before Santa comes but tonight I made a special trip back to take its picture. In order to get the shot nice and sharp without lens flare and bright spots. I set up a sturdy tripod with a geared head and made multiple exposures, it is a technique I use often as an architectural photographer. If the camera stays absolutely still I can use bits and pieces from different exposures. I can even remove people.

or on occasion add them, by picking all of the best people shots from several exposures I can make sure everyone is in just the right spot, and not blocking anything important. I shot this just for fun which can be a good way to challenge yourself, speaking of fun I recently started a series of weird portraits that I am really excited about. Thanks for checking this out. Please let me know if you have any questions. And as always, if you have a project or business that you need architectural photography for, I would love to hear about it.

Joe and Tony's Service Twilight Photo

In Claymont Delaware there is a great deal of architectural diversity, a relic of it's development over many years. Peppered through the neighborhood there are a few really charming buildings, one of my favorites has to be Joe and Tony's. The building looks a lot like it must have back in 1942 when it first opened it's doors for business. The building is a charming mix of architectural form and function. I have been bringing my car there for years, so I was thrilled to work with Joe and Tony's to create an iconic image to promote their business.

We discussed a twilight image of the building and agreed that a classic car would be a great away to really show off character of the building and business. They provided the classic 1971 Oldsmobile 442 that was in about the most beautiful condition you have ever seen, and the rest was a piece of cake.

The image was shot over a period of a couple of hours and pieced together from a number of exposures. We used a combination of flash and flashlights to light everything up and get the picture you see here. When using a sturdy tripod, it is a relatively simple task to combine several exposures. In this way I can use only one or two lights to light an entire building for photography. Then once the shooting is complete the separate exposures are combined digitally into a single composite architectural photograph.

If you are in Claymont and you need your car worked on you should check out Joe and Tony's, they are great people, they do really good work and have impeccable taste in photographers. And if you need photography for your architectural portfolio I would love to help you out. Current examples of work can be found here.

A closer look at the 1971 Oldsmobile 442.

Lightroom vs. Photomatix vs. Lighting

Sometimes it can be hard to tell exactly what an interior design photographer does, without knowing what to look for it can even be hard to recognize a highly skilled architectural photographer. The photos look great but it seems like all they do is shoot the natural light. I look at tons of interior photography in books and shelter magazines and often the photographers are so good at hiding their efforts, that I wonder if they light at all. So I have decided to try using only natural light and compare the results to my usual technique of combining several exposures. For natural light I tried two different techniques. The first technique used a single exposure, exposed a little dark to catch the highlights outside of the window. Then in Lightroom I dodged the image to remove a bit of exposure to bring up the light in the room and match it with the window. I raised the shadows and reduced the highlights to bring the dynamic range under control. The second technique was to bracket, shooting several exposures from light to dark and then combining the pictures in an HDR program called Photomatix. In Photomatix I used the exposure fusion which tends to give more realistic results and is sort of a milder form of HDR. Exposure fusion is convenient and often preferred by real estate photographers who need to be quick and run-and-gun.

I was surprised at how well the single image in Lightroom turned out. It is a bit flat.

This image is the exposure fusion version and the results are very similar to the single lightroom exposure. Both images were difficult to color balance. Both image are also painfully flat.

For this shot I bounced strobe light around the window to give a sense that the light in the room was coming from the window. Using layer masks I combined the lit images with the natural light to give dimension without feeling too "lit".  Just as I thought, I do prefer the lit version, it seems to have more volume. Probably the best place to see the difference is to look at the bed reflected in the mirror. In the lit version the bed looks great all of the textures show well and the shadows on the wall are softer and more pleasing. I also think that the contrast on the chair back gives a truer sense of the object and feels more three dimensional.

Overall it was a fun project, it was shot for the artist that hand finished and refurbished the vanity. I think that this does prove for me that lighting can make all the difference, just as long as it doesn't look "lit".

In the end, lighting did make quite an impact on the final image. While the exposure fusion and single shot are usable I definitely prefer the lit version. In all cases the three versions require some good architectural photography photoshop techniques. More importantly, knowing how and when to light helps me insure that I never have to make a sub-par photo. I can always figure out some way to get the shot even if weather and lighting conspire to ruin the whole day. It is what you should be looking for if you are in the market for a photographer. Sometimes good-enough is good-enough but when it really matters that you get the best shot you really need a professional architectural photographer.

Meet Daniel Jackson.... Big Time Architectural Photographer

A little while back I was asked for images to be featured in the homepage slideshow of the Association of Independent Architectural Photographers. So I sent a few of my finest pictures. A couple of weeks later I went to their site and viola, I feel like a regular Julius Schulman. It is kind of fun to have my work represent the AIAP like this. The AIAP is a really good resource for architects looking to find architectural photographers near them. There are links by state with contact information and it is an easy place to see several portfolios at the same time.

What the Heck is that? Super close-up.

Lately I have been having a lot of fun with my Canon ef 100 2.8 macro lens, I also used a 25 extension tube and a 1.4 extender to get really close to my subject. With a 50mp camera like the 5ds I will be able to crop in really tight for even closer images. At this point I am so close, that it is tough to guess exactly what you are looking at. so here goes, any guesses? It kind of looks like a terry cloth towel or a cool looking textile almost like a sequined dress. Up close it has a texture a bit like scale armor that uses overlapping scales for protection.

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Beach towel? Prom Dress? Terri cloth underpants in the aftermath of a tornado in British Colombia?

This is a tough one, it is not a towel. If i pull back out a bit it starts to make a little more sense. Still confusing though, almost like a horse, the colors seem very familiar. There is hair, so it is obviously organic, an animal of some kind.

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Mr Ed quietly reading the newspaper as the sounds of children playing dances on the morning air like honeysuckles? A Kite? Bermuda shorts?

Now I am practically giving it away. Patterns of color to provide camouflage from birds and other predators.

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Zebra upholstery? A  limited edition ukulele bag signed by the members of Grand Funk Railroad?

If you can't tell yet it is a monarch butterfly wing. 

Getting so up-close and personal can be really difficult. Once the camera is so zoomed in movement is exaggerated, little movements travel up the tripod leg and look like an earthquake. All of this wiggling can lead to blurry photos. A couple of tricks I have learned to keep things sharp are to use a tiny tripod on a solid surface like a cement basement floor. That way the subject and camera are locked together. Using a flash to light can minimize movement too, since the exposure is so short. It can be difficult to get enough light even with a flash because the extension tubes have the effect of lowering the light levels since less light gets to the camera sensor.

These photos have very little depth but that is another item to consider in macro photography. Usually for this kind of image it is smart to shoot multiple images with minute focus changes between each shot, then later the photos can be combined digitally to produce a single image that is sharp all over.

This kind of photography can seem light years away form the architectural photography that I do but in many ways both disciplines are quite similar. They both require pushing the technology to the absolute limit to get the highest image fidelity. They often require uncommon equipment and know how and attention to detail. I also think both are a lot of fun.

Have you got anything you would like to see magnified many times? Let me know what you would like to see and I will take a shot at making a macro of it.

Cab Calloway Theatre

I was recently asked to get some architectural photos featuring the engineered wall panels at the Theatre in Cab Calloway School in Wilmington, Delaware. It is a great looking renovation that was designed by ABHA Architects. The wall panels are precisely angled to focus the sound back at the audience. The acoustics in this room are amazing. If you stand on the stage and whisper it is easy to hear at the back of the room, and this is a big room! It can be fascinating how architects and designers marry form and function in architectural design.

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The Builder was EDIS Company and I really enjoyed photographing their work. To show off all of the details that went into the design I used multiple exposures and combined the existing practical light with photographic strobes to bring out all of the colors and textures.

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An important aspect of this shoot was to capture the panels which were provided by RPG Diffusor Systems. They are very easy on the eyes but also provide an important function, the panels are set in the perfect configuration to reflect the sound to the audience, the ceiling panels are doing the same so that every seat in the house has great sound. I sat in on a couple of performances to shoot the theater in use and the schools pride really shows. The performances were amazing, I couldn't believe the skill level that the shows at this school were at. Expect great things from these guys. Being able to visit several times gave me lots of ideas of how to shoot a space that could prove difficult, reinforcing how important architectural scouting shoots can be. As usual the client had some suggestions of what to shoot and provided me with a shot list to demonstrate some of their ideas of how to proceed.

Such a fun project. A special thanks to Don my assistant on this shoot for all of the help. To see more of my images of buildings and architecture stop by my portfolio of architectural photography.

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