Architecture Photography Jay Goodrich Style

Notice that I said winners? Because it is Christmas and I have a soft spot at this time of year and only this time of year, EVERYONE that commented on last week’s post regarding how I shot an interior image is getting a print of their choosing. So Younes, Dave, Ilene, Dick, and Michael just email me your choice from anywhere on any of my sites, include your shipping address, and I will print and ship you a signed print for playing. I also wanted to mention that all of you managed to highlight something that I did to get this image. In an effort to not leave you hanging, here is the full story.

Step 1-Spend over an hour moving all of the homeowners not so great furniture out of the way. This included hundreds of knick-nacks. Assorted bark-a-loungers, pieces of ocean glass, and even the cat. By the way, the cat acted like a dog and I loved that thing. He just always wanted to be in my frame. Then bring in the tripod and camera. In this case I did in fact use a Canon 24mm Tilt-Shift lens on a 1D Mark IV body with a cable release. The tripod and camera were then leveled with a handy hot-shoe bubble level.

Step 2-Use said camera vertically to capture 9 exposures of 4 separate compositions beginning at the left of the frame and continuing with about 50% over lap to the right side of my composition. All images were shot in RAW. No external lighting here.

Step 3-Move all of the shit back into place. Continue photographing house until it was pitch black out and pouring to the point that all of my lens glass was fogged with condensation.

Step 4-Ride the two hour ferry back home. Thank god it was Thanksgiving and not 4th of July–early sunset.

Step 5-Get kissed and hugged by the kids, yelled at by the wife because I am a stupid man. Then kissed by the wife.

Step 6-Upload close to a thousand images into the server.

Step 7-Begin to edit, sort, and process.

Step 8-Process this image. It was a 6 hour long mission. The whole image was mastered completely by hand. First, each of the four compositions needed to be merged to balance the exterior light coming in with the level drop that was present in the interior. Yes, the exterior does really look like what is shown in the glass, but it doesn’t necessarily need to for a lot of my clients. Then, I balanced out all of the lights and darks to make the interior look exactly as I wanted. The Mask Adjustment Palette in Photoshop CS5 is amazing for this. Now, the separate compositions need to be merged together. I have to admit that I did use the Photo Merge function in Photoshop to make this happen. It did a pretty good job. Where this function falls short is in the pattern areas of the plywood and ceiling panels. So after I finalized the crop, I then go back to my separate un-merged exposure images and cut and paste specific areas to make everything line up. Also there was a glass cabinet right above the bench in the fireplace tower that I completely cloned out because it was, yes, full of more ugly shit. This file was then saved as a layered composition file just in case I ever need to move more things around. And it is 1.5GB in size. This is why I use a Mac Pro with 30 inch Cinema Display.

Screen Shot from Jay Goodrich's Computer © Jay Goodrich

Step 9-Flatten the image and go to town removing dust and miscellaneous things that just couldn’t be removed in the field. Then adjust for color, contrast, lightness, darkness, saturation etc. Click the image above to see what all of the layers are. At this point the file is only 630MB +/- something that is workable.

Step 10-Go to bed for a mere 4 hours it was 3am and I had 7 other images that needed to completed before noon to be sent off to the book publisher, who is Australia and they are a full day ahead of me.

Step 11-Today I fixed the leaning mullions in the image that I noticed yesterday when I did an architecture promo. See, it never really ends. Just Morphosises onto to something else. Like crazy mountain biking.

Architecture Photography Jay Goodrich Style

Ok, this is pretty simple (not in the slightest). Insert Dr. Evil laugh here. Tell the world how you think I created this image. We want as many details as you can think of from lighting, capture, to post processing. Remember too that architecture photography is all about moving furniture. Start there. You can even click on the image to see it larger, that may help. The person with the closest guess and most details will win a free 16 x 24 print of their choosing off of my stock or portfolio websites. You have one week! Begin.

Lake Crescent Olympic National Park WA © Jay Goodrich

Oh yeah it’s one of those scenes…I can here you now, nice colors Jay, I like the textures, interesting perspective. This scene is not what you think my friends. What you don’t see in this image is the devil, pure concentrated evil. I am speaking of the 666 variety. Just lurking below the calm waters of of Lake Crescent here in Olympic National Park exists a serpent. Last weekend I was leading a workshop there with a great group of 25 photographers and all of them were just as unsuspecting as you are to the events that were about to transpire. Hell even I wasn’t on board.

It wasn’t mere minutes after this wonderful, peaceful scene was created on my sensor, sent through the buffer, and written to my flash card that the world was about to change. I moved in closer to the water to create abstract reflections of those branches in the right of this scene. Some great compositions. And then in an instant. FUCK! Yes, I managed to knock my brand new 1D Mark IV and 70-200 f2.8 IS II lens, tripod, ballhead, and shutter release into the lake. I mean that unseen fucking serpent took it–I can’t blame it on my own stupidity now can I. Not just a little, but into the depths, complete submersion. Listen to the needle drag across the record here.

My alter ego, (Tyler Durden from Fight Club) wanted to beat the crap out of me, but he resisted in this case, so the 25 severely concerned witnesses didn’t have me committed. After going fishing to bring the whole rig out, Art and Gavriel helped me dry it off. What the heck was I going to do? There were still two days left in this workshop? I decided to go for it and press the shutter release to see what would happen, and to my surprise, the damn thing took a picture.

Arms raised like I had just won the SuperBowl. YES! A true testament to a Canon professional body and lens. After toweling off the exterior, I went in. Opened the battery compartment, flash card compartment, lens off, everything completely dry. Looking through the lens no water, nothing. This can’t be happening to me. I never have this kind of luck.

And then, after about 2 hours, the scene from the Empire Strikes Back came blazing into my life. “Chewy, let’s make the jump to lightspeed.” Han Solo pulls the lever, and in the true spirit of his luck, the ship shutters and slows, as if to say, I am just too tired my friend you are out of credits once again. The lens fogged, camera produced an error message, and menu went blank. “But, but I thought I fixed the hyperdrive?” Laser blasts all around. FUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK! No water anywhere inside? What the hell? Again?

After kicking the tires, scratching my head, and other various body parts, trying to figure it out, it came to me. Wait, wait, I went from the clear blue warmth into the cool, moist, shaded rainforest of the Hoh. Temperature gradiant and just enough moisture left in those seals? What if I open everything up and put this puppy in the hot car, in the sun for a few hours?

Hours later as we walk down the water’s edge of the Pacific on Second Beach, my thought process was about to be tested. Had I come up with a legitimate solution? Was I worthy of the “Professional” title in front of my name? “R2 what do you mean the hyperdrive was disconnected?” The flick of a little lever and…The stars all of a sudden align and blur like a long exposure. Hyperdrive fixed once again. Click. Time to photograph the sunset.

I am now off to the desert to lead a group in Zion, where this no water–no water, just rocks…

Mark Kogelmann Drops into the Powder of Blueberry Chutes © Jay Goodrich

Many of you have been wondering where the heck I have been. It has been how many weeks since my last post? I know, I know, inconsistency is not good for Google, SEO, PPO, CPS, NPS, LLC, INC, and whatever other abbreviations you can come up with. Seriously though, I have been working like a crazy man. 21 days of photographing skiing, 14 days of teaching workshops, and then image mastering–tons of mastering, keywording, descriptions, titles, and headlines. And let’s not forget the proposals for upcoming projects. Days are just flying by, I can’t believe it’s almost April?

I have put together submissions to Patagonia, Powder Magazine, Black Diamond Equipment, and a major calendar company. I taught a workshop with my dear friend Art Wolfe in Seattle on the art of composing images, then I taught two HDR workshops at this year’s NANPA Summit in McAllen, TX, and the whole time in-between working to create the best ski portfolio ever. This is where I need to add a special thank you to all of the athletes who have been working with me–Mark Kogelmann, Owen Dudley, Peder Bottheim, Tyler Hatcher, Nick Marvic, Colin Poff, Pat Tolton, and Ian Burge. The images would be nothing without them. Now, I would also like to thank the Academy…I think it just feels good to complete missions and projects. It’s like adding another notch to the bedpost. Or something like that. Laugh. Oh and there will be a film highlighting all this work sometime this spring, with an interview with ah…me. We are thinking of calling it life | SENTENCES, what do you think?

I have been to Seattle, Texas, Canada, and now as you read this China. Yep, JG Inc. is going international–again, this time crossing the monster pond. If I can sort out an internet connection while there, (which I am hoping I can do) I will post some of the work I am creating while there.

As if that wasn’t enough, l have managed to fill all but 2 of my workshops. China–FULL, The Olympic Peninsula–FULL, Zion–FULL, Lightroom 3–space left, and Alaska–space left. The Alaska trip is being co-lead with Art Wolfe, so why wouldn’t you want to go? I mean it is not everyday that you get to drink really good Tequila and Bourbon with really good photographers. Right? And in the future, I promise to try and enlighten the world at least once a week with something intriguing, if not, it will at least be completely off the wall, humorous, and as misdirected as a Jack Russell Terrier.

twenty 10 from Jay Goodrich on Vimeo.

Photographer and writer Jay Goodrich has assembled a collection of his work from the past year. Images were captured on location throughout Washington, Colorado, California, Oregon, Utah, New Mexico, Montana, and Wyoming.

My friend Jim Goldstein has a project on his blog every year where he asks people to submit their favorite images taken during the previous year. This year he inspired me to take it a little further. I finally created my first film, video, or what ever you would like to call it. I know there are plenty of mistakes, but I tried to go a little further and tell a little bit more of a story. Maybe I achieved success and maybe I didn’t. Either way I guess we all need to start somewhere. I hope you enjoy. One thing this project has taught me though is that I am pretty impressed with the capabilities of today’s software and computers. As a kid I never imagined that this would be possible from my office above the garage.

Stars and Moving Clouds, Mount Rainier NP, © Jay Goodrich

After such an amazing evening hike and dinner with Heather and the kids I couldn’t help myself this month. I had to use one of the images as a photo of the month. I was fortunate enough to capture this photograph at the bottom of the Paradise Trail as we finished our hike in complete darkness. I decided to throw all the rules of composition out the window and include way more of the sky above rather than the foreground of wildflowers that was at my feet, which was almost black to the naked eye. Since these clouds were rolling along at a fast pace all I needed to create the above effect was a 30 second shutter speed. In some cases it takes much longer shutter speeds to see even the slightest bit of movement in clouds, but not on this night. The scene looks almost like the volcano itself is outgassing during an eruption. Taken with a Canon 1D Mark III, 16-35mm f2.8 lens, Gitzo tripod, Kirk ballhead, and mastered in Adobe Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5. You can read more about the evening and see additional images on my weekly post to the Outdoor Photographer Magazine Blog.

Second Beach Seastack, Olympic N.P., Washington © Jay Goodrich

the new iPhone 4? The answer is not that it was taken with an iPhone 4 or any phone for that matter. You can guess, I dare you.

bicycle in front of the fruit crates, Yakima, Washington, © Jay Goodrich

A few weeks ago I was in Yakima, Washington with friend and fellow photographer Daniel Galan. Right at sunset I lead the charge to ditch the wives and kids to shoot a few images before settling down to a margarita and a little of the local Mexican cuisine. After being cooped up in a hotel room with the kids all day he gladly obliged. So what to shoot? Yakima isn’t exactly booming with crazy scenery. Or is it?

Earlier that morning I spotted this area of town that had what seemed to be tens of thousands of fruit boxes lining the street corridors down by the proverbially train tracks. This place offered up a photographer’s composition paradise. There were patterns, textures, shapes, and even some “local color”. One kid kept begging me to take his picture, so I finally asked him to ride through the frame. Without any further direction he slowed down enough for my dwindling shutter speed and rode exactly where I would have suggested. A few clicks of the shutter and bingo, my artist statement about Yakima, Washington in one frame. Daniel and I could have spent days there, I think we pushed it for about an hour before the wives started texting. I know I will return. Maybe when those boxes are full of fruit to add even more color?

Mount Shuksan, North Cascades National Park, WA © Jay Goodrich

I have been skiing for 25 years now. If I were about to turn 30 and not 40, I probably would be some kind of professional athlete instead of a photographer. Maybe? I only say this because statistically most professional athletes are exposed to their sport at an early age, usually before they can really walk. The “experts” say by 5, I didn’t start skiing until I was 15. However, there is nothing to say that I wouldn’t hate skiing if I were exposed to it at that early of an age and be exactly at the same point in life regardless. I can say though, that skiing is my sport. It is my heroin. No reasonable offer to ski will be turned down, ever, period. I can’t really explain why, I just love it. There are many mistresses in my life (sorry to my wife and my kids) fortunately, they are all favorite lines in the backcountry of some mountainous place. Some have hated me, some have treated me with open arms and others have gone unnoticed. The key to all of the best lines though is the snow. The best dressed gets my respect, always.

Recently, I had hands-down the best day of this season. It was the culmination of a week long storm cycle that brought close to 8 feet of new snow to the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. The snow phone at Mount Baker Ski Area reported 16 inches new in the past 24 hours and snowing heavily. I arrived at the maelstrom only to agree whole heartedly. It was dumping! Close to 2 inches an hour at times. I think there was 8 additional inches by Noon. Then came the crescendo, the break, visibility. Intermittent at first, then more and more towards clear blue bird. I pushed on, my sore and tired body fueled by the availability to see. A day that ended at 4:30pm with this–the gift. For every skier, the beauty of the mountains, beholds the key to finding those amazing lines.

Clouds over Second Beach, Washington © Jay Goodrich

I spent last night leafing through a sketch book of mine from 1994. That was right after I graduated college with a 5 year Bachelor of Architecture Degree. This sketch book was originally 100 sheets of paper. I know there are less pages in there now because I remember tearing out multiple sheets for those “whatever” necessities over the years. This book has everything in it. Notes on construction projects, diary pages, wacky sketches, designs, logos, notes to my brain, dimensions, quotes, literature, black, white, color, how-to stuff, and what ever else came to my mind. The book is completely full, with a final page stating “the end” in blue pencil dated almost 5 years ago. I didn’t bring this sketchbook everywhere and there were many others. I was looking at this particular one because I remember liking the paper texture and feel for drawing and wanted to find a new one that was the same or similar.

Seastacks, Second Beach, Washington © Jay Goodrich

On one of the pages in classic Jay scribble was written a quote, “The rest of those who have gone before us can not steady the unrest of those to follow.”–Finding Forrester. I don’t know if that quote was written for the movie or if was taken from someone else but, whew, definitely thought provoking. And, when thinking about creating a photographic image–even more provoking. I immediately think about all those photographers who have been to popular locations before many of us, the Art Wolfes and William Neills of the world, or the Elliot Porters, Ansel Adams, and William Henry Jacksons for that matter. I can not imagine being the first human to discover a place like Yellowstone or Yosemite. Crazy.

The Pacific Ocean at Sunset, Washington © Jay Goodrich

A couple of weeks ago, I had that little taste of venturing back out into nature to a place that has seen and will see tons of traffic. I have personally visited the location three times now. This place is Second Beach in Olympic National Park. I am not the first and not even close to the last, but for me this place holds a beauty and a tranquility that is almost indescribable. Many have asked what the sunset was like that night, well, it was pretty amazing. It was…perfect and not for the common visual cues that rise to the surface of the mind immediately. It was perfect for reasons beyond.

Beach Texture, Washington © Jay Goodrich

As I think about that quote a little more, it leaves me with a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration. What does he truly mean, “those who have gone before us can not steady the unrest”? After sifting and thinking, over and over again, I have come to one conclusion. Those before, no matter how original, how creative, or how different can not change those who follow in their footsteps because the followers desire the same thing–with photography that is the act of creation. My unrest is my desire to create something, anything, new and different. I crave it and I will never cease from it. And quite frankly, it does not matter who came before me, no matter how amazing their images are or were, I thirst for something new, different, and in response to my personal visual connection to that place. I think of it and my stomach churns, my heart skips a beat, and I peruse thoughts in my head of how quickly I can find a place, that one or a new one to study, explore, and fuel the unrest for the rest…of my life.

Beach Texture, Washington © Jay Goodrich