Quadrant three

By: admin

01-03-2012

Architectural Photography of Quadrant 3, Regents Palace Hotel.

Quadrant three, or the Regents Palace Hotel, as reinterpreted by Dixon Jones Architects.

Near Regent Street in central London, 420,000 square feet of accommodation are provided, including 200,000 square feet of office, 54,000 square feet of retail and nearly 10,000 square feet of housing. The scheme also has a mew arcade allowing pedestrians to link through to Glasshouse Street. Architectural photography completed over two days. (All images copyright Simon Kennedy.)

Some of these photographs appeared in a recent Architecture Today.

001. Regents Palace Hotel:

2. Impressive structural glazing by Josef Gartner

003. Looking up the atrium:

4. Atrium glazing detail.

5. Regents Palace Hotel Atrium Bridges:

6. Architectural photography of the atrium showing cladding, glazing and bridges:

7. Atrium:

8. Atrium:

9. Detail of roof glazing:

10. Roof glazing and views across the city:

11. Quadrant 3 roof glazing:

12. Regents Palace Hotel walkway:

13. Quadrant 3 roof and walkway:

This is the blog of Simon Kennedy, London Architectural Photographer. If you would like to see more of my work, please visit www.simonkennedy.net

St Mary’s University College, Twickenham

By: admin

20-02-2012

Architectural Photography, london

St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, architectural photography

The blog of Simon Kennedy, Architectural Photographer based in London. My website is www.simonkennedy.net

St Mary’s University College Twickenham has a beautiful new sports facility designed by architects Rivington Street Studio. A really fantastic day for this one, beautiful Autumnal light all morning, conveniently clouding over in the afternoon so that I could have lunch, and then becoming beautiful in the evening once again in time for a lovely sunset.

The £5.8 million scheme extends and renovate existing sports facilities at St Mary’s College, adding 1950 square meters and refurbishing 2000 square meters of the existing facility. The centre is in part for use as a training facility leading up to the Olympic games this Summer, and includes gym facilities, a large new sports hall and changing rooms, all housed in an exemplary low-energy development. Architectural photography completed over one day. (All images copyright Simon Kennedy.)

001. Architecture of St Mary’s University College:

02. Entrance forecourt and canopy:

03. Entrance portico and canopy:

4. Undulating timber eaves on the north elevation:

5. Architectural detail:

06. Canopy detail showing lights in soffit:

7. Architectural details:

8. St Mary’s College: Client and architect shake hands under the entrance canopy:

9. Entrance forecourt:

10. Undulating north elevation:

11. Entrance corridor:

12. Reception area:

13. St Mary’s College: Changing rooms showing clerestory detail:

14. Brightly coloured shower tiles:

15. Circulation corridors:

16: Corridors outside the sports hall:

17. Architectural details of the metal cladding:

18. Kalwall-clad circulation:

19. Courtyard:

20. St Marys College: Inside the precast-concrete-clad sports hall:

21. In the sports hall:

22. Wide angle shot of the sports hall:

23. Strength training facilities:

24. Strength training facilities:

25. Cardio-vascular training area:

26: Western elevation:

27: North elevation

28. The sun catching the eaves:

29. Dusk on the north elevation:

30. Outside the cardio-vascular training area at dusk:

31. Dusk shot:

32. Dusk shot:

33. St Mary’s College Twickenham:

This is the blog of Simon Kennedy, London Architectural Photographer. If you would like to see more of my work, please visit www.simonkennedy.net

Cannon Place

By: admin

25-01-2012

Architectural Photography

Cannon Place, Cannon Street London.

Foggo Associates’ scheme for Cannon Place renovates and extends a very busy underground and network rail scheme, providing 36,000 square meters of office accommodation. Cannon Place is eight stories high, sitting above the station featuring curved and double-curved glazing, atria, spectacular views across the city, and some impressive external structural steelwork.

Architectural photography completed over two days, using 5×4” large format Fuji Pro 160 NS, in a Toyo VX125b. The lenses used were a Schneider 58mm Super-Angulon f5.6 XL, Schneider 72mm Super-Angulon f5.6 XL, Rodenstock 135mm Apo-Sironar-S f5.6, Rodenstock 210mm Apo-Sironar-S f5.6. (All images copyright Simon Kennedy, London Architectural Photographer.)

Cannon Place:

Dusk shot from Cannon Street:

The east elevation:

View from Cannon Street at sunset:

External Structure expressed in steel:

Mesh cladding detail:

East elevation showing exposed external steel structure:

Another view of the east elevation:

External detail of facade:

The facade of Cannon Place to Cannon Street:

Dusk shot:

Dusk architectural photograph:

Dusk view of Cannon Place:

Photograph showing the new building and its relationship to the existing architecture:

Cannon Street:

Cannon Street view:

Architecture of the east elevation:

Cannon Place – external steel structure:

Cantilevering Corner:

Interior:

Meeting room:

View form the office out toward the Monument:

Interior office floor:

View towards St Paul’s Cathedral:

Curved glazed corner of the office:

Architecture of the office floors:

Cannon Place office floor:

Typical office floor:

Office floor with atria:

Office floor:

Architecture of Cannon Place:

Office floor:

Office interior showing views across London:

Lift lobby:

Lift lobbies:

Architectural photograph looking up the atrium:

The atrium at Cannon Place:

Cannon Place:

Looking up the atrium:

Looking up the atrium which also features expressed structural steel:

At the top of the atrium, lift mechanisms are expressed:

Architecture of the top of the atrium:

Atrium glazing:

Atrium top:

In the Atrium:

The Cannon Place atrium:

This is the blog of Simon Kennedy, London Architectural Photographer. If you would like to see more of my work, please visit www.simonkennedy.net

Epson v750 vs Drum scan

By: admin

05-01-2012

Architectural Photography, Digital technique, london

Epson V750 for 4×5 or Drumscan?

My recent shot of Batteresea Power Station had a slightly more complex birth than my other shots, being both drum scanned and scanned with my Epson v750 pro flatbed scanner. This is its fascinating story.

I was pleased with the 4×5” negative as developed by Rapid Eye in Shoreditch. I have been using an Epson V750 for a while now, scanning my architectural photographs which are mostly 4×5” large format film. As you can see, the V750 scan looks OK, with some nice colour and clarity going on, also helped by the fact that it was shot using the magnificent Rodenstock 135mm Apo-Sironar-S on Fuji Pro 160NC. This image was processed using my normal workflow, with curves adjustment layers etc, until I thought it looked about right.

However, this Epson V750 scan has one significant problem – the trail from the lights of the aeroplane in the top left is cut off, even though it is not in the negative. The Epson V750 holders are in my opinion good enough for 4×5, but they do crop off a portion of the negative due to their design. This annoyed me enough to contact Tim Parkin, a friend from Flickr, who I know has a Howtek drum scanner, and operates a business called Cheap Drum Scanning.

Drum scan vs Epson v750 – Negative

Here is the drum scan from Tim without any processing, which captures the whole negative as I wanted – one point to the drum scan:

Epson v750 vs drum scan – detail

I could not resist doing a quick, unscientific comparison between the detail in the drum scan and the Epson v750 scan. The drum scan is 19838 x 15820 in resolution, 314 megapixels – large. The Epson v750 scan is scanned at 3200 dpi, then resized to 10,000 x 8000 (my standard workflow – I will not be rescanning for the purposes of this comparison because I do not believe the 15,000 pixel original Epson v750 scan contains any more real detail than the 10,000 pixel reduced version, and also because I believe it is not in dispute that a good drum scan will capture more detail than an Epson v750). This is what it looks like when you resize the adjusted Epson v750 scan to the same size as Tim’s drum scan:

Clearly the drum scan has more detail than the Epson scan – you can pretty much see individual bricks. This is not a surprise. The next part, however, did come as a surprise.

Drum scan vs Epson v750 – tonality and colour

While processing the drum scan in Photoshop, I noticed some unexpected advantages over the Epson v750. The drum scan has a much richer tonality, which makes it much more malleable than the Epson v750 scan, a difference that is striking in a similar way that editing RAW digital files gives much better results than editing in-camera jpegs. Here again is the final, Photoshopped drum scanned image:

And here is a comparison between the two.

While I know that I could get the processed Epson V750 scan closer to this drum-scan, the point is that using my normal processes and workflow the image came out one way with the Epson v750 scan, and one way with the drum scan. Using my standard workflow for both files, the drum scan also clearly has a better dynamic range (see the centre of the lights, anywhere in the shadows) than the Epson v750.

I was highly over-excited when I saw this and I emailed Tim about it, planning ways to buy a drum scanner and drooling over the significant possible improvement to the quality of my work. Unfortunately, I will not be buying a drum scanner in the near future, for the following reasons:

1. Much of the quality of this scan is due to Tim actually knowing what he is doing – see here. I don’t really feel like learning all of this additional software and technique.

2. I scan up to 100 negatives a week, and the drum scan is quite a bit slower than the v750. I don’t think I could fit the extra time into my workflow.

However, this experience showed me that it is certainly worth sending stuff to Tim at Cheap Drum Scanning if it is one of my very best negatives, or if I want to make a HUGE print.

This is the blog of Simon Kennedy, London Architectural Photographer. If you would like to see more of my work, please visit www.simonkennedy.net

Battersea Power Station

By: admin

04-01-2012

Architectural Photography

Battersea Power Station is an iconic London landmark, despite being empty and basically unused for thirty years. Battersea Power Station has been in the news recently as the developer of the Battersea (West London) site, recently valued at £500 million, has entered administration.

Many schemes have been developed for Battersea Power Station, including one by MJP Architects, completed just before I entered their office as a part one architecture student. Rafael Vinoly developed the most recent scheme for Battersea Power Station, but this too has sadly failed.

Chelsea Football Club are currently involved in developing a scheme, also with Vinoly and KPF Architects to place a new football stadium near the power station, but this scheme is being opposed by The Battersea Power Station Community Group, who apparently (source) want the building transformed into an exhibition centre.

Personally I would love to see Battersea Power Station become Tate West London, or something similar, hardly an original idea but Tate Modern is one of my favourite spaces in London. Either that or leave it just as it is, a kind of mouldering theme park to a long-gone, once world-leading industrial powerhouse of a city.

Photographing Battersea Power Station

During the Summer of 2010, I was on the opposite bank of the Thames from Battersea Power Station, photographing a housing scheme for Haworth Tompkins Architects, the Peabody Estate in Pimlico. Walking back from the shoot, I could not help but notice how fantastic Battersea Power Station was looking, and so took a couple of shots.

Battersea Power Station, architectural photography by Simon Kennedy, London Architectural Photographer. This shot was taken with a Toyo VX125b, Rodenstock 135mm Apo-Sironar-S, shot on Fuji Pro 160NC, a 15 minute exposure at f16. Large format is not easy in the dark (or at any other time) but it is almost always worth the extra effort in my opinion.

The crop below is from a 270 megapixel scan (18000 x 15000 pixels) made by Tim Parkin of cheapdrumscanning.com. As you can see, the individual bricks are (just) visible in the wall of the power station. This is not my sharpest ever negative, but clearly it is detailed.

Battersea Power Station Christmas Card

This is an adjusted verison of the Battersea Power Station shot, that I sent out as my Christmas card this year. I don’t think it requires much explanation!!

This is the blog of Simon Kennedy, London Architectural Photographer. If you would like to see more of my work, please visit www.simonkennedy.net