School at Dusk: 3 sides
Run run run. Getting three sides of a building at dusk is a little risky, but we pulled it off.
A blue sky day is what most clients wish for to showcase their buildings during the day, but often this type of beautiful day makes for a short dusk period, especially heading into the fall.
When I photographed the Bloomfield High School, renovated by Tai Soo Kim Partners we had just such a day. The blue sky, while dramatic can create a couple trade offs. My client hoped for all dusk images, but we had 3 sides to capture in one evening.
The three images below were made sequentially from left to right starting just as the sun dipped. With nothing in the sky there is less light bounced and hence a shorter after glow period. As well the lingering blue sky can continue to reflect in large expanses of glass as seen in the last image. By the time we had run around to the library, which was in a courtyard on the north side, this reflection had finally subsided enough to easily see in, but consequently the ambient light was dimming in relation to the interior. I think we pulled out three good images (actually there was a fourth too), with the south LED sign entrance and then library glass wall as the most winning. The three images in a row make an obvious show of how quickly disappearing and short the optimal window of time is for making dusk images. In this case we got through and saved the client a return trip.
 School at dusk 1 west |
 School at dusk 2 south |
 School at dusk 3 north |
Cg
American Miniature Portraits
To quote from Robin Jaffe Frank’s book Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures, “Portrait miniatures, small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, are uniquely personal works of art. From colonial times to the age of photography, they were often commissioned to commemorate births, engagements, marriages, deaths, and journeys.”.
I had the opportunity to photograph 38 of these “Minis” as they are known for short. This was a similar collaboration with the Yale University Art Gallery as I’ve done in the past, like 1000+ Ancient Coins and Swid Powell. Three weeks were spent photographing the objects, recto and verso (front and back). Some of the objects were the same published ten years ago in Robin’s book Love and Loss at the early stages of digital photography. The reason to re-shoot many of these objects years later was to capture them as high resolution original RGB files that can be properly managed and archived. Unfortunately, in some cases the images retained from ten years ago were CMYK converted files and of only 1:1 resolution. The images I made of course are wide gamut 16bit RGB tiffs, often with a possible magnification of 5:1 if printed (300dpi) and even larger when displayed at screen resolution (72dpi). The remaining images are newly photographed objects on long term loan or as promised gifts.
Photographing these unique objects provides not only publication quality images, but also highly valuable research possibilities with high resolution reproductions. The Art Gallery is also planning to use these images at digital exhibition kiosks next to the originals on display. The public will be able to see both sides of the Minis and zoom digitally in to minute details.
Below are a couple choice objects. Check out the Minis project page , where you can see some zoomify examples (see detail up close) and more images. Unfortunately I can’t show all images (loan or promised gift objects are excluded).
 Mini Portrait |
 Verso |
 Mini Portrait |
 Verso |
 Mini Portrait |
 Verso |
 Mini Portrait |
 Verso |
 Mini Portrait |
 Verso |
 Mini Portrait |
 Verso |
Thanks to the helpful Art Gallery staff and especially Robin Jaffee Frank, Alice and Allan Kaplan Senior Associate Curator American Paintings and Sculpture at Yale University Art Gallery.
Yale West Campus feature
Everyone needs a summer project, right?
Well I’ve been spending some time out at Yale’s West Campus lurking around the mostly empty buildings and parking lots.
The campus is huge and there are people out there working, like conservation staff from the Yale Art Gallery and a good portion of the Peabody Museum’s collection.
Here are a couple images, and the full set can be seen here.
 Warehouse |
 Entry Way |
 Connector |
 Welcome |
 Ready Space |
 Parking |
Update: Check out the Yale Alumni Magazine article online here.
Cranes in the Sky
It’s the wave of the future they say, the Potain Crane.
I had a blast photographing the delivery and installation of this Potain Crane on Chapel St. in ‘ole New Haven last week. The crane sits on a concrete pad in front of Street Hall, a second to another in front of the Swartout building. These cranes support the renovation of both buildings as part to the Yale University Art Gallery renovation and expansion that started with the Kahn building.
The crane erection was an amazing process that started at 7am with setting up the support crane (the yellow one with wheels), and finished at 4pm. Note that the crane I photographed sits low on a concrete pad and up the street the first crane is high on a box structure – so they are at different heights. This makes sense when you see at day end they test crossed the cranes. All folded up the Potain Crane stands up and unfolds all via remote control. I’ll resist a boys and toys comment, as the crane/process is actually rather elegant.
Check out the image gallery and you can see the process unfold. Click on the screen grab image.
Construction Crane Erection Gallery
Thanks to the kind folks at Dimeo for letting me on site. And of course Leslie the Yale Art Gallery for having out for the day.
Chris
Gilead Room
A very rainy day, but it was dry inside a huge ex-Bayer building on Yale’s West Campus. This is the conservation and pre-assembly of the Gilead Room from the Young’s family house, from Gilead, Connecticut. Photographed this for a future published story on the West Campus complex. I’ll hopefully have more on that later this spring/summer.
The Art Gallery art handlers had just recently put all the main pieces together and removed cardboard that had been protecting the floor boards. You can see all the parts pre-assembly here (scroll down some, not my image so come back). The framed in room will be taken apart after some more conservation and reinstalled at the Yale Art Gallery in a year or two. The open wall sections and ceiling will be plastered in once reinstalled. Cool!
Thanks to Emily, Eric, and Tom for letting me into their secluded workspace.
Chris
Bone Rocking Chair
Ooooh! Precious. I mean it.
Nothing like photographing a glass dome in someone’s living room with windows on either side. Now you can’t tell that can you! Right that’s me job. No fancy black box, high ceiling museum studio here folks.
This Bone Rocking Chair by the artist Charles LeDray was photographed for an upcoming, and then traveling, exhibition at ICA Boston. Actual object will not be in show, but my image will be used in the show catalog and publicity. Show is called “Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork”, and is at the ICA Boston, Whitney Museum of American Art, and then Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
First image here is one of my final images (made three). Middle image was emailed to me ahead of arrival. And last, granted a snapshot out of a book, the image I was improving upon, previously published.
 Bone Rocker, Charles LeDray |
 Reflections on Glass |
 Previously Published Image |
Bone Rocking Chair is in the collection of Samuel R. Peterson (Connecticut), and thank you to him for allowing me into his home.
Yale: Kroon Hall 2
Yale Alumni Magazine (Sept/Oct 2009) has story on Yale Forestry’s Kroon Hall. 5 images accompany the article. I photographed this back in the spring, but was bumped from the summer issue for space. Posted is a webgallery of all 19 Kroon Hall images made for the Yale Alumni magazine. http://www.arch-clig.com/projects/kroonhall/
Screen Grab of Kroon Hall webgallery
In The Field
In the field, next to a river being eaten by early evening bugs. Having fun.
Finally photographing some some projects for David Thompson Architects. I think I met David at least three years ago, maybe four. Well my daughter is almost three and there weren’t any babies then so… Anyway, I’m in the field for the Barnard Environmental Magnet School. Also photographed two other sites. One of which was inside the Yale Leitner Planetarium, which is below.
 In the Field |
 Being Biten |
 Barnard School |
1000+ Ancient Coins
1000+ Ancient Coins is my second “move-in” project this summer. I spent 3 and a half weeks at the Yale Art Gallery’s Coins and Medals Department creating obverse and reverse images of two collection segments and other greatest hits to fill out a total count of about 1050 coins. Phew. Thanks to William Metcalf, curator and especially Jane Miller, museum assistant, for all their assistance getting me through.
Images were captured with the relatively simple setup as seen below in the production still gallery. The coins photographed varied from about 4cm to .5cm in diameter. Print size (aka indication of image resolution) from my captures was on average over 16cm. Obverse and reverse images were combined into one final image with a reference scale. Varying amounts of extension were required from about 56mm to over 200mm. As can be imagined depth of field was nearly non-existent and so for many of the smaller coins a post production technique called focus stacking was employed to get sharp images of lumpy objects.
 Macro Setup |
 Viewfinder |
 Tiny Coin |
 Tiny Coin 2 |
 Mobile Setup |
 Gold Coin |
Update: Check out the project page I made for the 1000+ coins where you can see some zoomed details, project specs and a wall of coins.
Swid Powell Collection
I have two “move-in” location projects this summer. This is the first. I spent two weeks wedged (in the most comfortable way) into a small studio, photographing 80+ objects from the Yale University Art Gallery’s Swid Powell collection for general museum use and in preparation of a planned symposium in the fall. You can find out more about Swid Powell here, as explained from a 2007 exhibition. The collection includes objects designed by including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Stephen Holl, Richard Meier, Robert A. M. Stern, Stanley Tigerman, and Robert Venturi, among others. The symposium is to be held November 12-13, 2009 at the Yale School of Architecture.
Thanks so much to John Stuart Gordon for having me and all the effort polishing all the silver. The project was a pleasure.
 Capture Screen |
 Object with shrouded lens |
This nutty piece was shot with two different light set ups and pieced together to remove highlights on the green glass vase (as seen in single capture on monitor above), but keep some additional light on the large metal gold bowl.
 Finished Image |
I could post many neat looking design objects like Steven Holl’s Oil Can creamers or the Tigerman building tea service. Maybe I’ll post a link with a special Swid Powell gallery if I get a chance. UPDATE: Link to gallery of Swid Powell objects.
Anyway, keeping with the behind the scenes theme, there were many a single plate (charger) to photograph. My secret thanks goes to Tony DeCamillo, a staff photographer at YUAG for a perfect plate back drop. Plates were photographed safely on their back and then dropped into the background. Oh my god, this made blazing through about 40 plates a breeze.
 Behind the Curtain |
 Mappelthorpe design, finished image |
Chris