Years ago now I had the early privilege to photograph the renovation of the Louis Kahn building, home to the Yale Art Gallery. That project was done before I fully worked for myself and started out on 4×5 film. This spring I had the privilege to photograph the construction complete, but empty spaces of the newest additions to the Art Gallery.

These renovated and expanded buildings are: Swartout and Street Hall. Swartout, which previously had gallery space, adjoins the Kahn building. The building has been extensively cleaned on the outside and in the great stone sculpture hall (inside the arched windows), but also sports the new very “white cube” upper stories. The expansion includes a 4th Flr, a mezzanine space in the tower, and a new terrace. Street Hall, attached via the High St bridge, was most recently the home of the Art History Dept. In many instances the changes are careful restorations of spaces, especially in Street Hall where sky lit galleries now look close to what they did when they displayed art in the first half of the 20th century.

Below is a comparison between a mid-construction image of the Swartout building I made from ground level in 2010 and a finished image in 2012. From the 2010 ground view, one can’t see the old glass skylight roof that now has a 4th Floor on top of it. Probably the most striking change is the amount of cleaning done. A close eye will also note the addition of a stone cap to the main wall that signals the new terrace behind. The terrace (as seen an above exterior image) is accessed from the 4th Floor addition.

Swartout

The deconstructed 3rd floor skylit gallery that now sports expansive 3rd floor ceilings and a new sky lit 4th floor gallery on top.

In Street Hall this lecture hall as seen in 2007 has been turned back in to the open gallery it was over a century ago when Yale’s early art collection was shown here.

An interesting project personally, and especially for the many layers of art and buildings that have housed art at Yale in one way or another for many years.

Thanks to all: Yale University Art Gallery, Ennead Architects, and Dimeo Construction Company for having me, it’s a lot of fun to be involved with a building project over so many years and see things change.

Chris

Another reason, variation, and use of a tilt table (of sorts) to make possible photographing in tight quarters. This time for a heavy 10ft+ weaving that is meant to be displayed hanging vertically. The object had recently been cleaned and was still being stored rolled. Additionally there were no walls tall enough to hang the weaving or space high enough for me to rig it temporarily.

Final Image

Working 99% of the time on location I need to be able to accommodate many types of objects with the space allowed. That means planning ahead and staying flexible on site. The most difficult of course is a new residential location with only descriptions and measurements from a collector (which I often do without the luxury of a preliminary visit). Luckily I had been to this location a year ago and knew the space. As well we had spent the previous day photographing a group of ceramic works from the same artist.

Tight Quarters

I made this large tilt table and tested it before arriving to photograph. Aside from just making the table, pre-departure testing included setting up a mock photography scenario. This meant testing for table tilt (angle), tripod height, and distance back, everything would need to fit the room width, depth and height. Room width was easy, but I couldn’t get further back or make the ceiling higher on site.

Non-Slip Mat

Elevated

~45deg

Supports

The table was made from two shortened sheets of 3/4″ plywood and a 2×4 to join them. The plywood was covered in grey paper on site and then a double thick (and a little tacky) rubber carpet mat was stapled to the surface. The goal was to make a table strong enough to support the object safely, stay flat under weight, and of course be as compact as possible to transport. With the addition of two geared tripods the table ended up as simple and compact as one could hope. The only unknown was if the weaving would stay put once raised up to 45deg (my optimal photographing angle for the space). The rubber mat did it’s job perfectly, nary a slip, and the table supported everything perfectly. Happy me and happy client.

(previous tilt table use with poster size art)

Blower Fans

Not CERN scale cool, but great vintage steam(punk) cool.

The image will run as a two page spread. Many thanks to George, who helps maintain the system, for stepping in on short notice.

School Entrance

Just after this image was made I started to descend the hill, and because the fog was so thick, you could look directly at the sun. At that moment there were some power lines crossing in front of the sun and what I first thought were two birds sitting. The “birds” however were moving along with the sun and not staying on the power lines. When the sun is so low you can actually see the sun (of course more accurately the earth) move rather quickly.

The nut I am I turned to my client and said, “Do you see those two black spots on the sun?”. The reply was, “no”. And shaking my head I say, “Well I swear I can see two spots on the sun”. Or that was approximately the dialogue. Not two days later I stumbled across this National Geographic article about massive sun spots on the sun, large enough to see with the naked eye.

Sometimes you’ve got to trust what you see!    -it is after all our greatest way to perceive our universe.

In the field (another view from a field) and light where there was not any.

Sometimes the vision for the ideal view of a project is just not the current reality. This Garden Pavilion serves as the entryway and main gate for the Common Ground High School teaching vegetable garden. We photographed the finished structure in the fall as seemed appropriate for fruitful gardens. But the school had opted to hold off on electrifying the building (while still planning surrounding services).

While I’d say today’s trend, and definitely among my clients, is to photograph projects under natural light conditions, as well as use the designed light environment instead of sticking in a big photographer’s nose. In this case David had designed lighting that he envisioned illuminating the translucent roof, a great way to create atmosphere for evening outdoor events the school might hold. So in addition to making day images we had the task of illuminating the roof from within to create a glowing roof at dusk a reality. The logistics turned out to be easier than if the building had been more enclosed. We used a series of wide open faces light down the rafters on each roof side and a couple smaller spots on the floor interior. And of course the generators to power everything while we waited for dusk to descend.

Generators

Interior Lighting

Interior Lighting

Scouting View

And the finished image. With a second preset camera in the garden we were also able to make a matching broadside image from within the garden.
Thankfully in the fall, in a field, at dusk we weren’t eaten alive waiting for the right moment!

Harvest Pavilion at Dusk

I had the interesting opportunity to photograph some archival documents, posters, paintings, etc at the residence of artist Richard Artschwager for an upcoming Whitney retrospective. Nothing too different in the photography, though I tested out a nice new portable tilt photo table (new meaning: my construction). Barring hauling a studio column this makes poster size flat works manageable on location with just a tripod. Also, though ceilings were not a problem here, the tilt table allows a shorter ceiling height. Anyway, it was a privilege to photograph the work and meet such an art luminary (lunch was great!). I can’t post any inside tour pics, but the converted church residence was a trip.

Artschwager

Artschwager

Poster

Blip Stencils

I couldn’t help but make the first here after I saw it (made it on the way out, after covering the bases). I knew it wouldn’t make it with space constraints. The reason being that without the help of a heavy caption one understandably would assume the left wall of names is also from the Civil War (which it is not, World War II, I think). Anyway, point is outside of editorial clarity or expediency I like the architecturally formal strength here. In this I think I have a sense of space and a visually longer lasting image – the building lines are there to follow, loop back on, and interlock.

Civil War Memorial

The second image as well was not published, as this whole wall was. I want to share this here because it is a good editorial image for me as it feels different than many I have made. It is closer of course, perhaps, but (and maybe it is just the subject matter) it feels more intense.

Civil War Memorial

Alright, here it is, summer project 2011. Soooo much fun, well a little work.
I had the privilege of photographing 716 Walker Evans Polaroids over the course of two weeks. Kind of a hired gun situation (pardon the metaphor, remember I don’t shoot things!), but I wasn’t going to pass this up. Thanks to John ffrench, Josh Chuang, and the helpful PPD staff for having me, and helping me get through this many objects in only two weeks!

Update: added a project page for Walker Evans Polaroids, all 716 fronts and moved the in depth project description too.

Cozy summer cave:

Studio Layout

 
Closer
Some closer views of the photography stand below here. Lights were cross polarized and Polaroids were held down under glass.

Photography Stand

Glass Hold Down

The Trick, ‘er Method
The trick (or more professionally sounding, the studied method) for this type of high volume / high quality project is a consistent, smooth workflow. Objects are batched out in chunks that make sense for both equipment and human attention. I’m pretty good at estimating how long something will take me in the early project planning phase (i.e. estimate of cost for client), but there is always a slightly panicky “rubber meets the road” period in the first day or two. I plan quite a bit and do test shooting on prop objects if needed. The goal of this project was high quality human inspected color correction (not what is often referred to as “rapid imaging”) for each object. The objects have been fading and changing over time and photographing them now as faithfully as possible at least creates a record for this time that will last.

Line 'em Up

Results
A couple stand outs (in my humble opinion, each for different reasons):

NO!	Walker Evans	Sink
Desert Shadow	Friedlander	Angel
Eco Cans	Lights	Birds

I see myself as an image maker and this is important in that I don’t see images “taken” or “captured”, instead MADE. Sometimes this is less artistically subjective in the photography of art (aka museum photography) where the making might be more about technical making (assembly) or in this case a more subjective, but not excessively produced image that uses a little foresight and an ounce of assembly.

This exterior image of Woolsey Hall in New Haven, CT was made to accompany interior images I made of the Civil War Memorial that lists both fallen Union and Confederate soldiers of Yale (look for an upcoming mention on those).

Woolsey Hall: Final Image

Scouting Images
First, if there is time I want a scouting image. Camera phones are awesome for this and I’ve used a pano app to approximate the wider view I’ll make later.

Scouting Phone Pano

 
Base Plate
Next is actual photography. In this case all images are made from the same view (what I most often do) as samples out of time or varied by some other parameter like exposure (a parameter could be depth of focus to give you another idea). The first image is my base plate, a clean scene with an accurate overall exposure.

Image Base Plate

 
Selective Elements
1. People
This Woolsey Hall image is effectively an “editorial” image where the goal is to make a natural looking view of the building (not a more stylized or lush “beautiful building” image). While I want all of the building facade, I also want some context to place the building. Unfortunately the available context is essentially the intersection in front. That is not so much a problem as this building is an intersection of sorts itself, as a gateway to Yale’s campus. So that leads me to filling the contextual intersection space with traffic, and not car traffic, so I want pedestrian traffic. The majority of additional plates are then sampling out a good crop of human traffic.

11-026_003-people	11-026_004-people	11-026_005-people
11-026_006-people	11-026_008-people	11-026_010-people

2. Tree Branch
The branch hanging down as seen in the base plate is providing an affect I want, keeping the view contained lower in the image than floating up to the dome. It looks too heavy though and projects too far down into the frame. I want it more at the edge. Here are the plates that get the leaf parts I want (I’m just on a 4 step ladder pushing up the same branch seen in the base plate). A bonus has been that I like the wispy clouds that have appeared and given me something other than a blank blue sky.

11-026_009-tree

11-026_010-tree

11-026_011-tree

 
Finishing an Image
All the above images are laid together. The finished image of the building is made up of all these additional elements on top of the base plate. Of course I could have closed the intersection, hired models, and had assistants hold the branches – and maybe had it all in one exposure. That is a valid approach and vary well could have produced an identical image. On the other hand the cost to create the image would be much, much more. As well there is something I think composed, not contrived about the image. Here again is the Final image.

Woolsey Hall: Final Image

Here is a quick behind the scene panorama with one instrument up on a table to photograph the sound board.

keyboard setup pano

Same instrument as finished image.

Instrument Soundboard

Fun group and day, can’t wait to come back again!
Cg