Vape the folks
Most architectural briefs for commercial spaces have a requirement that people are included in the final images. There is nothing more desolate than an office space devoid of humanity, or a shopping centre without shoppers.
This brief was for a brand new client – a London-based architectural/commercial property firm with clients in all parts of the UK who had stumbled across this very blog, and my main website after a quick Google search.
The client wanted a range of images to illustrate a brochure featuring a property in a prime part of Central Durham housing one of those Vape places, where people can buy Mango & passion fruit flavoured Nicotine gas and make it look like their car is on fire when they put the window down at traffic lights. It had to be sunny, show the context of the surroundings, and give the impression that it was jam-packed with shoppers. I scouted the location beforehand, and discovered that it was on the sunny side of the street (anything else would have been nightmarish). The street curved down to the Elvet Bridge, directly below the glorious imposition of Durham Cathedral. I set up my Nikon D800 and 24mm PC-E lens on a tripod, making sure I wasn’t obstructing anybody, connected my Camranger remote control unit, linked everything to my iPad Mini, and set about getting the first shot.
Where passers-by were concerned it was famine or feast. There were individuals, huge groups of Chinese tourists, and the inevitable old-blokes who were obsessed with the gear – stopping to chat, and imparting their wisdom about the landscapes they did. It was impossible getting this in one frame, so I shot about 20 frames in total, making sure that the people in the shots were in various parts of the frame, were of various ages, and suited the scene (no tramps). The frames were all layered up in a big Photoshop file later, and various people were masked in and out until I had a range of people distributed evenly throughout the frame.
I shot in landscape and portrait formats, and made sure to include some frames using a slower shutter speed to show the movement of the people. The two main considerations of this type of composited shot – much like my real estate stuff – is to ensure that the camera doesn’t move at all during shooting, and that the light remains the same throughout.
Funnily enough, using the same technique of shooting various frames with people in different positions can also be used to completely remove all traces of humanity from the final picture using the “Median Stacking” process in Photoshop once the layers are all stacked on top of each other. That’s for another time though.
The whole shoot took about 90 minutes, with some post-prod afterwards as well. The client was thrilled with the final results, and I look forward to doing more for them in the future.
