Photographing homes, offices, shops or public buildings might not involve people, but it takes the same level of creativity as I use in my portrait, wedding and corporate photography bookings. Because most of my work comes via recommendation or from clients I’ve worked with before in the north east, they often trust me with a very simple brief such as ‘I need some shots of a building’.
I never know what to expect and it can be a challenge to arrive at a building to find it only part complete. It’s understandable because developers need to get a fast return on their investment and market their properties as soon as the paint is dry and it means I often have to work around builders and decorators and their equipment to get the shots I want.
The trick with property, particularly industrial buildings and office exteriors, is to look for lines and shapes while steering away from the wackiness of steep angles and overly-slanted buildings, which are not appropriate for commercial property photography. I like to keep images clean and crisp, and use a mix of wide angle and also use short telephoto lenses, combined with post-production skills on Photoshop to keep the parallels lined up and the pictures pleasing to the eye.
The best light conditions are often in the early morning or late at night, when the tonal range of colours is most vibrant. And those are perfect times for taking pictures without people too, which can date a photograph. Sometimes I’m helped by the exterior of a building being lit, so I can use shadows to create depth.
I was pleased to be asked by Middlesbrough Erimus Housing to photograph its innovative Bohouse development, which is part of the Boho Zone, the commercial quarter for Middlesbrough’s digital media, digital technology and creative sectors. Bohouse provides flexible living and working space, encouraging people to work from home and set up new creative and digital media businesses. My brief was to produce lively, contemporary pictures that would help to fill the last few apartments in central Middlesbrough.
The bathroom and kitchen showroom job presented an interesting challenge. To create a luxury feel I wanted to use the purple light set into the spa bath, which meant some clever – and quick - work with three flashguns to get just the right look for the glossy magazine for which the pictures were destined.
Good quality architectural and interior photography encourages interest in a property for sale or rent, and the kitchen and living room interiors shots were taken to showcase a Fabrick Housing development on Teesside. Happily, because the homes had been ‘dressed’ by interior designers, I had a range of colourful accessories to use as props to create a fresh, aspirational feel to the photography.
Sometimes it’s a case of looking for that one great picture that sums up the building. A long shot of a B&Q lighting centre reflected in a steel lightshade perfectly captured the enormous range of products available. At the other end of the scale a job to photograph a very practical sports centre interior forced me to look for an unusual angle, and I opted for a remote fish eye lens, set inside a locker, to bring a different perspective.
Redcar seafront’s £8.3m Hub is a new 35,000 sq ft business centre for the creative industries sector, and part of the town’s seafront improvement scheme that includes a 80ft high ‘vertical pier’. I was asked to photograph the architects’ model of how the finished development will look, and worked with natural lighting to reproduce the remarkable light conditions only found at the coast.
Whether it’s industrial, commercial or residential photography, my job is to let the pictures speak for the buildings, and encourage people to live, work and relax there.
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