Tips for hiring an architectural photographer #4
This is post 4 of a series of 10, in a series detailing important aspects to hiring an architectural photographer while avoiding the most common pitfalls.
COLLABORATE
Photographing buildings and interiors is not an exact science and it requires collaboration between the photographer and client, in order to achieve the client’s vision. Photographers have a particular way to look at spaces, usually different from the clients'. It is a good idea to use this difference in viewpoints as a sounding board for coming up with ideas that neither you, the client, nor the photographer might have thought of on their own. The pre-production meeting and the scouting shoot are great places to brainstorm and kick-start this process. If you are going to be present on the day of the shoot, use this to you advantage by discussing each view with your photographer and formulating your specific needs in the clearest way possible. Your photographer should be able to show you each shot prior to capturing the image to serve as the basis for discussion.
Yorkville residence, Audax Architecture
Goldring student center by Moriyama & Teshima
Main entrance
We recently had the pleasure to shoot the new Goldring student center at Victoria college on the University of Toronto campus. Our assignment was to explore the relationship of this new project to its surroundings and emphasize the contextual importance of all the buildings one can see in this dense urban environment. The student center is surrounded by exceptional buildings such as the Isabel Bader theater (Lett/Smith), McKinsey building (Hariri Pontarini Architects) and the Gardiner museum (KPMB) among many others.
Back of house / quadrangle, looking east
Working with context as the main idea driving this shoot, it really opened our eyes the relationship this building has with its surroundings. This is one of the main motivations behind moriyama and Teshima's work and we had a lot of fun working at making this evident in our photographs.
Quadrangle
Hopefully our readers are able to get a better understanding of the project from an urban perspective and we would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section.