Architectural Photography…Julius Shulman

Julius Shulman is widely regarded as the most important architectural photographer in history.  Over a seventy year career Shulman not only documented the work of many of the great architects of the 20th century, but he elevated the genre of commercial architectural photography to a fine art form.   It is illuminating to recognize the simple fact that the work of architects such as Neutra, Koenig, and Lautner are virtually known all over the world through the images and perspective of Julius Shulman.  As Neutra astutely observed, “His work will survive me.  Film is stronger and good glossy prints are easier to ship than brute concrete, stainless steel, or even ideas.”Born in 1910, Shulman and his family moved to California from a small farm in Connecticut at the age of 10.  In the mid-thirties, Shulman attended UCLA and Berkeley, never formally registering at either school, but merely auditing classes that appealed to him.  In 1936, having just returned to L.A. from Berkeley, he accompanied an acquaintance (one of Richard Neutra’s draftsman) on a visit to Neutra’s Kun Residence which was under construction.  Shulman made six photographs on this trip which Neutra liked and subsequently bought. Soon after Neutra introduced Shulman to other architects and urged him to build his career as a photographer.  After making over 260,000 images, Shulman announced his “retirement” in 1989, but the next twenty years were filled with major museum and gallery exhibitions around the world, numerous books by publishers such as Taschen and Nazraeli Press, and a growing list of clients seeking his photographic services.  In 2000 he met the German industrial/architectural photographer Juergen Nogai who had come up to Shulman’s studio to meet the legendary man.  The two have been collaborating photographically ever since, revisiting locations previously photographed by Shulman and building a client list of new contemporary architects.  In 2005, the Getty Research Institute acquired Shulman’s vast archive, but he continued to work until the age of 98. Shulman passed on Wednesday July 15th, 2009 in his home in Los Angeles.

The Details

The physical things:

Color, form, texture, line, highlight, shadow, selective focus and focal length. These elements describe the available tools the photographer has…these physical elements are driven by the story that is being told and the subtleties are created by how the elements work together…that’s where the emotional and mental things take place.

The emotional and mental things:

Finesse, gesture and rhythm… Below are the dictionary definitions for these words.

When the physical and mental/emotional elements are working together you have content with impact!

Here are some images by photographer Lisa Adams that show qualities of finesse, gesture and rhythm.

Here are some images by Irving Penn:

Your assignment is to shoot the ingredients for any recipe you’d like. The image can be black and white or color and it needs to feel believable. You’ll need to use the Irving Penn images as examples of style, finesse and rhythm. You can shoot on a light background. I don’t want you to rely on the white plexi shooting tables for your background. I want you to resource other light or white surfaces…marble, fabric, wallpaper….

Food and Still Life Photography

I love food and still life photography…that’s why I do it. Like I’ve said before, find what you love, do it, immerse yourself, sell yourself and the success and money will come. You can’t do it in a vacuum…sell, sell, sell!

For the next 5 or 6 weeks we are going to explore food and still life. We will discuss the use of hard and soft light as well as the combination of both to create the story the client wants.

Light, Form, Shape, Texture And Composition:

Light tells a story. Light describes form, texture and can describe a sense of place. Illuminating is just pouring light on your subject to get the proper exposure. I think of lighting like a sculptor thinks about the block of marble he’s about to carve life into. Lighting is not just putting light on something it is also carefully removing light as well. Light can be hard or soft, or a combination of both. Light can be pushed through shapes to break it up into patterns. Light is our most important tool. The light can come from a window, it can bounce off a building, it can refract through glass, it can come from a cheap flashlight, candle or the most expensive Pro-Foto gear you can buy. It’s not about the lighting equipment it’s all about where you place the light you’re using. Aside from all the expensive lighting gear out there it’s the little cheap items that round out the lighting story. These are the small light modifiers you should always have on hand:

1. White box board for reflectors. Foam core can work but it yellows over time.

2. Silver and gold cards. These will add specular highlights into your shadows and can be as strong as a light source as well…the gold will add some warmth.

3. Black cards to cut light off of areas you’d like to put into shadow.

4. Small square, rectangular and round mirrors. These do what the silver cards do but they will kick in even more light and they are more directional.

5. Dulling spray. Applying this to the silver or gold cards or the mirrors will spread and soften the reflective light.

Aside from an understanding of how light works and how it can be modified and shaped composition and propping are the physical part of story telling. The process of propping is like casting the right actors to portray characters in a film. Composition is like the blocking actors have to learn in dealing with the story. (Blocking is a theatre term which refers to the precise movement and positioning of actors on a stage in order to facilitate the performance of a play).

Here are some samples of great lighting and composition:

Irving Penn

Edward Steichen

Edward Weston

Horst P. Horst

Ralph Gibson

Craig Cutler

My favorite food and still life photographers:

Beth Galton website

Chris Collins Studio  website
Teri Campbell  website

Steve Hamilton http://www.stephenhamilton.com

 

Here’s a couple posts from my blog showing behind the scenes stuff:

Healthy Cereal

Besides shooting ice cream cereal is probably next in line for complexity. In the world of packaging photography food products require a clean, simple and meticulous approach. A fast read and a quick to the point design is a must because the shopper has rows and rows of products competing for attention.

We recently shot a cereal-packaging project for “Peace” brand healthy cereals with graphic designer Randy Palmer.  I thought I’d share the process and the final outcome with you folks.

Here’s one of the shots:

Here are a few of the packages:

We had several shipping boxes full of product that was used to painstakingly go through and pick the best flakes and clusters:

Individual clusters were built into larger clusters using hot glue:

Each bowl was built on a foundation of Crisco that acted like a platform to keep the composition of flakes and clusters in place:

Once on set final adjustment to the contents were made to adjust for lighting and composition:

The final touch is adding white glue to the bowl in place of milk. Glue is heavier and whiter than milk and also doesn’t make the cereal soggy:

Finally, yours truly and designer Randy Palmer and the client and marketing folks:

Thanks goes out to Randy my trusty assistant Robert Humanski and the stylists Kim and Jill.

Not Just Beans And Rice

I got a whole new appreciation for Mexican cuisine while shooting 20 plus food images for Macayo’s menu and new web presence. The reason for my new-found food joy is because we ate their food every day for lunch during are four-day shoot. I never realized there was such a variety of food choices available. I always figured Mexican food was a once a month deal…now I could eat it every day! These are some of the shots from this project along with some behind the scenes snap shots.

This is the site design.

Special thanks to my ace assistant Robert Humanski and the two styling twins Kim Krejca and Jill Flewellen.

Who Doesn’t Like Brownies…

We’ve been shooting for Fairytale Brownies for several years and I must say the team we work with is outstanding. The story behind the company is equally outstanding. Eileen and David met in grade school, took a family recipe and created a great brand.

I get the most enjoyment in shooting still life and food photography, and this client allows us the freedom to explore ideas and approaches when we shoot the beauty shots for their catalogs.

An Unusual Departure

This is an unusual class… it’s the first time a class like this has been taught on this campus. You will be learning the aspects of two very divergent genres that only a few photographers specialize in. The world of food and still life photography requires a specific set of physical tools as well as a mind-set devoted to making things appetizing and desirable. On the other hand architectural photography also has its own set of physical tools as well as a necessity to understand space and the relationship objects have in a much larger space then the table top of the still life and food photographer. There are as many similarities as there are differences in these two genres.

During this class you will come to learn how some of the activities involved with these two topics can be interchangeable.

The two images below have many things in common that can be applied to either genre:

1. You’re dealing with inanimate objects…one on a large-scale another a much smaller scale.

2. In both shots the images are made up of the basic shapes…in this case squares and rectangles.

3. Shapes are organized to create some sort of understandable order…in the interior shot the camera is placed to minimize confusion and create a balanced composition…in the food shots the camera placement is secondary to the arrangement of the props.

4. In this particular case the lighting in these images is very soft and open. The lighting is also coming from the available light coming from windows.

Just think of architecture as large-scale still life that needs a sense of depth and three dimensionality.

Top image: Trent Bell      Bottom image: Anna Williams

You will need to light every project. I don’t want any excuses that come from trying to make available light work when clearly you need to spend the time and take the effort to light it! I want to see a straight print and a production still showing your lighting set up. You can use available light but it has to work. Available light images will be heavily scrutinized.