London Vertical

Ksanti

Ksanti

Ksanti

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Joined
10 Feb 2010
Posts
3,248
Inspired by Horst Hamann's New York Vertical book, I thought I'd try my hand at them. Nothing incredible yet as I just had a wander round when I saw the light was nice but I'll probably get a book of these done as part of my pre-U.

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When I've built up to proper numbers I can start thinking about order and grouping. I doubt I'll end up actively going out to certain areas to get photos - I'll probably just take a load of photos before and after normal shoots and when I'm out and about as I'm in London 99% of the time anyway :)
 
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Hmmmm, looks like the work of a Nikon D800...

Cool shots, wish I lived in a city. I have to make do with trees!
 
The lack of Tilt Shift in these pictures makes me sad :( Have you considered renting a TS (well perspective control now) for a week or so to try with these shots?

Particularly in the sixth one :S

kd
 
It's deliberate that I haven't corrected it at all - Hamann deliberately sought out this sort of distortion (or he may have just been lazy) but if I'm emulating him I'm not going to make the verticals verticals - if I did these compositions would be very boring.

Plus I shot this with panoramas from my 50mm f/1.8 ai - given this would be the only application I have for this sort of lens, £1k on a t/s lens would be pointless.
 
If you look at 3 & 4. The tops of the building almost line up, and No.4 sort of looks like the side of the building in No.3.
What may be interesting is if you take shot's of buildings at different locations, but line them up/arrange them so the pictures together look like they are part of the same location, but are actually from different locations.

I'v never heard of this Horst Hamann cat, but perhaps you can be inspired by him, but add your own twist as well.
 
Yeah, but dropping £1k on a tilt shift lens to follow the internet golden rule that archicture verticals must be vertical doesn't really seem like 'adding my own twist'. It being London, and a few planned shoots with it (not anywhere near done yet) will be my own twists.

Perfect vertical lines in a 3:1 panorama completely lose the drama (I've tried correcting it and found that's what happens) and tbh this isn't the thrust of my project so much as a nice way to fill up a book :P

http://www.horsthamann.com/

His New York vertical book is fairly old so it's not on the website, but the paris one is.
 
Oh yeah with regard to your silhouette-joining idea, yeah that sounds good. I might try that out if it ends up being relevant to whatever directions my project takes - I meant more in response to KD
 
Ksanti said:
Yeah, but dropping £1k on a tilt shift lens to follow the internet golden rule that archicture verticals must be vertical doesn't really seem like 'adding my own twist'. It being London, and a few planned shoots with it (not anywhere near done yet) will be my own twists.

Perfect vertical lines in a 3:1 panorama completely lose the drama (I've tried correcting it and found that's what happens) and tbh this isn't the thrust of my project so much as a nice way to fill up a book :P

http://www.horsthamann.com/

His New York vertical book is fairly old so it's not on the website, but the paris one is.
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With a TS you don't have to keep the verticals perfectly straight, in fact as you alluded to that is a bad idea. What you can do is limit the convergence more but still leave some convergence, that is what most people tend to do with TS/PC lenses.
 
Well I could, but again, given I'm emulating Hamann (who didn't use TSs), I don't see why I'd spend more than I've spent on any other lens for the sake of being able to make a series of images marginally better than they would otherwise look seems a bit of a waste to me.
 
If you want to emulate Hamann more (going off of his Paris set), actively seek out shots and compositions that remove depth cues and try to flatten the way shapes relate to each other in terms of perspective. No wide lenses, just a 50mm, maybe find a good vantage point with a tele and take elements you see around you out of context. None of the shots you've posted so far really do that, the converging lines denote a foreground/background relationship too explicitly.
 
Yeah he does have depth in his New York book, though not to the same extent as in my photos. I'm keeping those as there's going to be subversion (one of the overarching themes of my projects) that will need that resting space at the bottom of the image, though I haven't used it yet.
 
Ksanti said:
Well I could, but again, given I'm emulating Hamann (who didn't use TSs), I don't see why I'd spend more than I've spent on any other lens for the sake of being able to make a series of images marginally better than they would otherwise look seems a bit of a waste to me.
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Are you doing photography at Uni?

Anyway, instead of a tilt shift, perhaps you could take some style cues from Hamann, and perhaps mix it up with some free lensing etc.
 
An Exception said:
Are you doing photography at Uni?

Anyway, instead of a tilt shift, perhaps you could take some style cues from Hamann, and perhaps mix it up with some free lensing etc.
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Nope. Too much begging for work involved with breaking out, and no real commercial outlet for the sort of work I like. Putting deadlines on my creative outlets and other people's demands tends to completely sap my enthusiasm for something. I'm going to be studying Economics & Management at Oxford with a bit of luck, just need to not let my grades tank. I'm doing Art Pre-U at school because I wasn't sure if I wanted to apply to London College of Fashion or the like pursuant to my photography, but I've enjoyed Economics so much, and the photography market is so saturated that I decided to go with a a day job.

Yeah I'll try a few of those ideas. I'm still getting used to the camera in many ways and it doesn't take much for me to go round and get some photos in London - much less work than sorting out photoshoots, so I can experiment as time goes by.
 
Congrats on the Oxford offer, what college are you going to (hopefully) be at?

Anyway, I've had a look at the NY version and yes, there is more depth in those ones. Although I do prefer the shots without depth, but that's just something I've developed quite a taste for recently. Have a look at Fan Ho's work too, lots of his vertical shots are really well balanced compositionally.
 
I decided to stick with a day job and I believe this has lots of advantages.
Not mixing business and pleasure works well for most people. I don't want to turn something I love doing for fun into something I hate doing, or HAVE to do to pay bills.

like you I realized there are far too many photographers out there. Making a living out of something that is so competitive just doesn't seem like fun. Different types of photography have different commercial possibilities but I am not interested in weddings or studio so that limits things to slim pickings.

Financially it also just doesn't make sense if you have a good career. Even charging good prices for wedding work would require me to do a couple of weddings a week through the year on average - and I couldn't think of anything more boring than spending hundred of hours in post processing yet another wedding.

Study hard and if you graduate from oxford with that degree then you should have plenty of expendable capital to buy the gear you want and travel around the world on photography trips where the only goal is fun, not profit.

There are also issues if you try to mix commerical work in your spare time with a full time job. E.g. one can book weddings at weekends but your boss/company can at any time ask you to do overtime with little warning - being busy due to alternative commercial interest outside the company is not a valid excuse.
 
Oooooft economics. (3rd year Eco student here)

Fair enough with regards to the TS. Although I did say rent one for a week rather than buy one outright!

Guessing you're planning on joining the photo clubs and stuff? Definitely makes so much sense earning butt loads of money though with a day job to fund a nice holiday :D

kd
 
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