West India Quay
Architectural Photos
West India Quay is a new development just across the dock from Canary Wharf in East London. It primarily consists of a row of Grade I listed warehouses divided into flats and restaurants, but will also include a hotel, a new apartment building, and a movie theater.
There's no West India Quay site as far as I know, but the International Symposium of Shadows, which will be headquartered at WIQ, does have a web site.
Right now, West India Quay is still under development. These are photos of the model flat that visitors to the sales office can view. If you like what you see, give them a ring at 0171 537 0000 and arrange to see it in person!
This was my first attempt at architectural/interior photography. My thanks to Mr. Broadbent at West India Quay Development Co., Ltd., who was kind enough to allow me to photograph his property.
All of the pictures were shot with my Bronica SQ-Ai with my 40mm lens. The Bronica body that I used had a Beattie Intenscreen with an architectural grid installed, which made things a bit easier. Fill flash was provided with a 600 watt-second Photogenic PL06 monolight bounced off a Photoflex umbrella. I shot the same photos on both Fuji Provia 100 and Fuji Reala to maximize my reproduction options.
As usual, click on the thumbnails to see the enlargements.
Note: These are scans of proof pictures. After looking at the transparencies, these scans seem very fuzzy indeed. I will get better scans soon.
Living/Sitting/Dining Area
This was the hardest of the shots. I had to balance the daylight coming
through the window with the fill flash to my right, and then balance that
with the quartz-halogen (tungsten) ceiling lights. I had to redirect two
lights to avoid flare. I attempted to use the rule of thirds with the window
and the pillar; having one or the other right in the center would have
looked awkward. I'm happy with the result, though there are problems. I
should have used a polarizer to kill the reflections, except I don't have
one that fits the 95mm thread on the 40mm lens. Things are a little
cluttered around the pillar.
Hall
In this shot of the hall, the bathroom and sitting area can be seen through
the doors. The hallway is almost completely lit by fill flash; I turned off
the quartz-halogen lights because they were creating hot spots. The
bathroom has a tungsten glow to it, but I judged this to be acceptable.
Half the sink was all I dared show, since any more and the camera
would have appeared in the bathroom mirror. I was jammed into a
corner, so I couldn't move much, and I wasn't using a view camera, so I
couldn't shift right. This picture, too, has its problems. The corner of the
rug is still upturned even though I tried to flatten it. (I didn't have any
tape.) I didn't notice the grey marks on the wall above the radiator.
Bedroom
This was the smaller of the two bedrooms, but I decided to shoot it in
preference to the other one because West India Quay already had a
good picture of the other bedroom. The room was so small that it was
impossible to do a canonical shot with parallel verticals, so I pointed
down and went for exaggerated convergence. This was the last shot, and
I was tired, so this shot has more than its fair share of goofs. The worst
problem is that you can see a bit of the umbrella in the reflection of the
wall hanging in the mirror. Oops! I also should have stuck the electrical
cord behind the desk.
Last updated November 19, 2001