London Vertical

[Ksanti]

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.

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

 

[Ksanti]

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.

 

[Ksanti]

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

http://www.horsthamann.com/

His New York vertical book is fairly old so it's not on the website, but the paris one is.

 

[Ksanti]

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]

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.

 

[Ksanti]

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]

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.

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.

 

[Ksanti]

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

kd

Haha maybe not quite to the same extent as David Yarrow (multi millionaire hedge fund manager by day, nature photographer by international golden hours ) but having a day job to take care of myself and my family, then only doing photography that I want to do and have it be a creative outlet rather than a commercial one, is probably going to be ideal.

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.

That, to an extent, is the goal. I don't particularly need international photo trips for my work at the moment though of course it would be cool. There's too much of a "you must give 110% to have a 10% chance of making it" in commercial portraiture, particularly among the agencies and galleries I've been speaking to. Frankly I'd sooner get my work noticed on its own merits rather than my business skills and work rate, then just say to magazines and the like, if you want me to shoot for you then you've got to realise that I only stuff I'm behind creatively and I'm not going to be working for peanuts because I don't /need/ your money

Congrats on the Oxford offer, what college are you going to (hopefully) be at?

St Edmund's Hall/Teddy's Hall is where I'm hopefully going. I applied to Exeter, but for E&M they're really popular due to a combination of their Rector/size/Econ tutors so I only interviewed with Teddy's. I'm happy with Teddy's to be honest, I didn't get a chance to go around every single college and Teddy's was quite nice when I went to interview.

Hmm, I don't think it is that easy earning that with a deskjob, for starters it's not that easy getting your PhD's is it?
(snip)

I don't particularly fancy wedding work, and even then you have to prove yourself and break out to an extent. Being limited to wedding work to make any real money wouldn't be the same as me doing what I love for a living.

Thing is I enjoy post processing, but there are only a handful of full time photographers in the sort of work I like, whose work is popular enough to be able to do all of their own processing. I enjoy the tinkering and wasting hours in processing on work when I consider it "mine". Though obviously work like Jaime Ibarra's is in many ways defined by his processing so he could never outsource his workload, photographers like Lara Jade who have moved into commercial work with a few bits of editorial, pretty much always outsource the bulk of their processing.

Not to mention that the demand for photographers is very uncertain over the next few decades - if I went into it now and then all of a sudden someone developed a room scanning technology or similar so that the perspective wasn't necessary or 3d rendering took the place of 99% of commercial photography, then what? Don't get me wrong, people will always enjoy photography, but I'm not convinced people will always pay for it.