Page 29 - Lighting the Un-lightable Volume 1 #3

"Wow, it isn't as easy as it looks...." he

said as we finished the assignment.

And it isn't. To be honest, I wasn't

sure if I was relieved or surprised.

Architectural photography is demanding in every sense of that word. At the
end of a full day, we are often left physically, intellectually and artistically drained.
Moving light boxes and strobes - even on stands with wheels - takes a toll on our bod-
ies especially when we usually have to work through a multi-story building without
disturbing activities around us. Our Pentax 645D and our Canon 1Ds Mark III are
very heavy as well.

Architectural photography is intellectually draining because even with our
lighting methodology, there are hundreds of variables and hundreds of decisions that
must be made quickly. We can't spend a full day just to get one image correct. Speed
and accuracy are essential. Artistically, finding the right angle, composing the image
and unlocking the emotion in the design of the building are rarely easy. Most of all,
translating the experience into a world the camera can see is always a challenge.

And there are countless problems we have to resolve - windows that reflect
strobes when they fire, reflective surfaces the camera sees that the human eye either
can't or which the human brain filters out, changes in natural light, the varied tem-
perature of lights in the space. Each and every visual problem must be resolved in real
time quickly. Recently, we photographed Farrell Hall at Wake Forest University and
while the design of the building is breathtaking, the technical and artistic problems
were monumental. To make matters worse we were facing a deadline - a major event
was scheduled for the afternoon and we had to be done and out before the guests
arrived. This meant we also had to confront a logistic nightmare - we had to decide
not only how to deal with the artistic and technical issues but also move through the
building in a way that let the event staff gain access to some of the key areas as early
in the day as possible. This was one for the books.

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