Earlier this summer révélateur shot the brand new Buckingham Arena in Downsview Park, Toronto. This was an interesting challenge for us as we had never shot this type of facility before.
WGD Architects designed a four-rink arena for local leagues and events. Based on our scouting shoot, our studio was commissioned to take 10 images of the project. We had our eyes open for the money shots and luckily, the cool, somewhat industrial and utilitarian aesthetic of the building lent itself well to getting great shots.
Main Lobby
We set out to shoot at the end of the day as we knew this was when the arena was going to be the busiest, giving us plenty of opportunities to introduce the human element in our images. Without people, such a large building would end up looking very empty and cavernous.
Lucky for us, there were hockey games going on during our shoot so we seized the opportunity to include some motion to the rink photographs by shooting additional frames a slow speeds so we would get the proverbial motion blur that makes architectural shots much more dynamic and is particularly fitting to shooting a hockey arena.
Main Entrance
We learned a lot from this shoot as we were given minimal instructions from the client and had the opportunity to explore some more creative angles, some of which ended up being picked by the architect.
We later on shot another arena for the same client that will be featured here in the coming weeks.
Typical rink (1 of 4)
