A couple years ago, a client engaged me to do a really fun and exciting project. It was a road widening in Kitchener. On the face, that doesn’t seem too exciting. What is fun is that the design included many elements that evoked the industrial and manufacturing history of the city.
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A client did design and consulting work on a new outdoor recreation complex in Toronto. The complex is in a gentrifying neighbourhood that, for many years, had a reputation as unsafe. The client wanted pictures of the new facility. They wanted people using the facility. They also wanted both day and night shots. Continue reading
A few years ago, an engineering firm engaged me to shoot one of their projects. It was a major bridge redesign/construction project in cottage country in Ontario. Two requests were made by the client: They wanted the entire span of the bridge in a single shot; and they wanted a boat going under the bridge, if possible. Continue reading
A client engaged me to photograph an urban park/trail design and construction project they did for a community in the northern Greater Toronto Area.
A highlight of the project is the metal sculpture at the trail head. It’s a skeleton of a boat, invoking the maritime heritage of the town. Continue reading
I was engaged by a client that had done a redesign at a radio station – all of the office areas, public spaces and broadcast studios.
If you have ever been in a radio broadcast studio, these are not large spaces. The lighting is typically not great because it doesn’t need to be. This can present a challenge to photograph. Continue reading
A client engaged me to do an interesting outdoor project. It was a large infrastructure project that entailed the design and building of a new bridge as well as the re-routing of a creek bed.
My client is known for being good environmental stewards and does a lot of work related to environmental cleanup. In this particular case, the project was being submitted by the city for design awards. Continue reading
I was engaged by a builder of custom homes to shoot some of their projects. The details in these homes were spectacular.
In one home, the range hood would move up, or down at the touch of a button. A very cool feature to be sure. I wanted to figure out a way to capture the movement of the range hood to highlight the feature for the client. Continue reading
Would you do your own appendectomy? No?
While the results of a mistake aren’t nearly as potentially serious the point is it makes sense to hire a professional to do the job. You want your product or service to look as good as possible when you’re trying to attract new customers. You work very hard to do the best job for your customers and clients. Why short change yourself when you present your work to prospective new clients?
Image restoration is a task that has been made easier in some ways with digital tools but even though it may be easier, it’s still not a 5 minute exercise as some may want to lead you to believe. In a past article I discussed the process of recreating a photo of a mural that had been damaged. That project took about 9 hours of editing time to complete.
An architectural firm hired me to shoot one of their projects which entailed some redesign work in part of the library at a local university. I prepped the images, which included some stitched panoramics. The architect had told me they wanted me to have some fun with the shoot. So in stitching the panos I purposely left curvature distortion where there would normally be straight lines. As I always do, I posted the proof images onto a non-public, password protected area of my site for the client to view. After doing so, the client came back and asked if they could get one specific image at full size before I delivered everything on CD. The image they wanted was one of the panoramics with the curved lines.
A lot of the commercial work I do is architectural. Recently, I was hired by an architectural firm to shoot several of their projects. One of those projects was a nearly 200 year old building. As you might expect with a building that old, there had been modifications done, there had been additions, there had been repairs and there had been settling over time. The work my client had done was converting the structure from industrial to mixed use commercial/residential. This included work on the exterior, cleaning up the brickwork, adding new – but period looking – detail and the design work on the interior.
I was hired by an architectural firm to photograph four mural panels at a local college. The architects had been engaged to do some redesign work at the school. Part of the redesign included covering up the murals. The murals are mixed media pieces and include some relief elements on two of the panels.