Burn Gym – Architectural Photography

Architectural Photography Assignment

Architectural Photography had been one of important interests for me. This time Noor(Noor Dasmesh Singh) commissioned me to shoot one of his projects. For more information about Noor please visit his website www.noorarchitects.com. On 15th of month(March 2015) Noor, Amarbir(Gym Owner) and me, all of us drove down to gym in afternoon. In the month of March as I can see the sky considerably more saturated than what I have seen it in June July time. I was bit more pleased with overcast weather in the morning and at the same time a bit worried too. But by the noon the day was a lot more sunny than what I thought. Seeing the contrast of lighting condition at the venue I could decide that I would not be able to get the assignment going by taking a single photograph of each of the views composed.

Using HDR

An understanding of HDR comes handy at such moments. Many of the photographs I took could only be rendered properly because I could take 7 photos of the view exposed differently. The odd number can easily suggest you that there were three underexposed photos, one properly exposed and three overexposed. Bracketing the exposure without flash and aperture as variable, only shutter speed varies The ISO was set to 100 which is the sensors natural film speed, and for achieving crisp results, Giotto’s ball head came handy. I would usually not prefer a tripod with 4 sections in legs but this time it was a great benefit as some of the views in photographs could only be realized because of the extra height offered.

Keeping verticals upright

The most important thing I ever learnt for shooting architecture is the relation of several horizontal and vertical planes with the objects filling the space between them. Quite obviously the change in height of camera effects the way they are depicted in a photograph. So keeping this at the back of my mind, I made sure that camera is aligned to keep the verticals as verticals. From many points the exercise equipment looked as clutter, and from many others it looked as if each device is quite far from the one placed next to it. Overall there were few photographs when camera was pointing downward to show the floor plan but not even a single time pointing up diagonally. Towards the middle, I sat down with Noor to count the remaining points required to be photographed so that any of the points do not get missed and demand all of us to visit Ludhiana again another day.

Post Production

Post production process took me approximately three more days which made this assignment a four day long process for me. The 14-24mm Nikkor with its Nano Coat prove its worthiness by rendering all the photographs fairly sharp and well saturated. The 20′ tall glass façade of the gymnasium which permitted the flooding light did fade colors of mats and certain other objects during afternoon which were selectively saturated while processing the raw images. Though I am not necessarily a believer of changing too many thing while processing raw files but I do believe to make sure that the output is consistent. The late evening part of the day helped us get a beautiful blue colored sky in photographs through the glass. Twilight time as usual helps greatly to emphasize the lighting. We wound up the assignment as close to 9:30 pm at night with some satisfaction and a heavy meal of Dominos Pizzas offered by Amarbir during short break.