In what seems to be a different life for me, I was a piano major back in college. Working this architectural shoot was a flashback to those days, only this time I was in a brand-spankin' new performing arts center decked out with custom-tailored spaces for each arts discipline.

I was racking my brain, thinking of a way to present these images with a story to accompany it, and the only one I could come up with was fairly straight-forward: the process. Here we go…

These are full-day shoots, not just an hour or two, but eight. Truth be told, I could have used a tiny bit of extra time each day. The first hour and a half is spent working out the lighting. These spaces are dark, and when I say dark, I mean dark. They are dimly-lit for presentation reasons and don't convey with even a camera that has the best dynamic range technology allows us today - it just doesn't work by default. That's why so much time and energy is spent adjusting the lighting, doing test shots, doing post-production, evaluating, and further tweaking the lighting. In what seems to be a never-ending process, it eventually does just that, ends. At this point, I'm able to actually get to work. From this point on, the lighting will not change, at all. Two reasons why - once it works perfectly for one image, it'll work perfectly for the rest as I'm photographing the same space. The other reason is psychological during the review/presentation of the images - if the viewer views the first ten photos, then photo eleven is lit differently, they will often think, 'what's different about this image?'. We don't want that - we want consistency.

Like I said, after the heavy-lifting of the lighting has been done, it's onto shooting. With spaces as large as these, I find it best to shoot a section and dump it to post-production immediately. Why? Because if I screwed up my perspective I need to correct it immediately. That's why I shoot the images, pop the memory card, leave the camera and tripod, view the images, evaluate, and finally adjust and shoot again or move on. Doing it that way saves me time when I do goof on perspective - it happens. It's incredibly difficult to make every angle and line appear the way it does in real life when you're looking through a viewfinder, even with the grid turned on.

Shoot all morning, post-production during lunch, shoot through the afternoon, post-production during the late-afternoon, then finally onto the 'detail' shots. The post-production on the detail shots are done at home after everything's packed-up as there's no time left in the day. Those shots better have been correct as there are no second chances. That brings me to a larger point - there really aren't any second chances in this line of photography. You can't attempt to get the shot all day, miss the opportunity, and ask for more time - there is no more time. Whatever space you're shooting is temporarily out-of-order to be photographed - after you're done, it goes back to being lived in.

On a personal note, this place was a blast to shoot.