There is so much work goes into certain shots in this Architectural Photography gig. I read a lot of articles and posts where photographers stress about getting the shot in one frame, or getting it right 'in camera'. This is all good and well when that is possible, and a lot of the time doing what I do, it simply isn't the case. But when it is the case, believe me I don't mess about, there is something great about getting it nailed in one.
So it's good to know what you have to do to get the job done when you can't nail it in one frame, or get it all right in camera. With this particular commission, due to the viewpoints specified, and the technical limits of my equipment, I had to think outside the box. It's what I get paid to do at times, especially when the problem needs to be solved. Shooting onto a high resolution tablet in these circumstances really helps, you can see more of the problems you're going to have when it comes to piecing the shots together in post production.
Even with the widest shift lens ever manufactured (Canon TS-E 17mm f4L) which is custom built for shooting architectural photography, I couldn't get the whole of this building in, you can see what I started with on the left and what I ended up with. A lot of bother to got to for some progress shots, but when it comes to shooting the finished building, I'll know exactly what the deal is, paid ground work at the end of the day, which can save a bit of time on the next shoot. The composites come from shifting the Canon TS-E 17 on the vertical axis in portrait orientation to get the whole shooting match in. With the final top shot, I had to tilt the camera back to get more sky and the top most part of the building in, as the lens was already at full rise on the level. There was a fair bit of work in post getting rid of all the crap and adding more sky, and opening up the shadows a tad, which I had to bracket all the shifted exposures to do. Question is would you have known, and does anyone care. Fingers crossed at least some do, main thing is, I do.
These were shot for Ryder Architects, I look forward to shooting the finished article when the time comes. The rest of the shots were to demonstrate the building in context, as it is a fair size. I would lose my mind in New York.
