As showcased in the Digest of South African Architecture 2012…
Architect: Elphick Proome Architects, Westville, KwaZulu Natal
Structural Engineer: Sutherland
Mechanical Engineer: RCE Consulting Engineers
Wet Services: AURECON
Environmental: Guy Nichols
Quantity Surveyor: Mbatha, Walters & Simpson
Contractor: Stefanutti Stocks Building
Branding & Marketing: The Hardy Boys
Fire Engineers: WSP
Photography: Dennis Guichard
It is said that there are just TWO requirements for creating sensational imagery; an interesting subject and beautiful light.
The architecture here at the new Unilever factory north of Durban, designed by the phenomenal Elphick Proome Architects, is of course way beyond interesting so the only element we had to wait for was some beautiful light. Closely watching the weather predictions recently we had to wait for about a week to get the clear blue sky conditions we needed.
With the excitement mounting we were on site early on Wednesday afternoon and had to wait around for about an hour so before the lightshow started. Once it starts you have to work quickly as at this time of the year you only have about 20-minutes before the sky turns black. The Unilever factory complex is big and spectacular so it’s very challenging to have to decide what angles and facades you are going to shoot and what you unfortunately have to miss for next time.
There is of course no singular perfect moment in time for shooting as over the 20-minutes you have a constantly changing array of colours and intensity of light to play with that enables you to create a wonderful and varying collection of high-impact images. It’s in these last 20-minutes of the day where all the magic happens in landscape and architectural photography so if you want to create beautiful images be sure to watch the weather and chase that light.
More images from my shooting at the phenomenal new Unilever factory in Riverhorse Valley Business Park north of Durban for Elphick Proome Architects, taken from around the mind-blowingly-impressive factory canteen area last week. It’s certainly the kind of enviable environment you would WANT to work at!
Unilever – it doesn’t really matter where in the world you live you will almost certainly know them by name. They make your tea, margarine, soup, washing powder, beauty cream, toothpaste, underarm deodorant, ice cream, etc, etc… Think of it and they probably make it!
Just recently opened in Riverhorse Valley Park in Durban this sensational, modern and exciting building has already won design architects Elphick Proome a host of local and international awards, and no small wonder too! The internal spaces are light and invigorating whilst the external structure is a sheer architectural delight to the eye. It’s the style of architecture and level of capability that make Elphick Proome Architects one of the largest and most successful practices in South Africa.
Watch the press on this one as the worldwide attention this new factory building is currently already receiving will see it featured on the covers and in editorials in a host of prominent local and international magazines.
Well done Elphick Proome, it’s another case of ‘Ayoba’ Durban architecture!
I’m very excited and pleased to hear that the Unilever ‘Indosa’ warehouse I shot previously for Elphick Proome Architects has just won a 2013 Award for Architecture from the KwaZulu Natal Institute for Architecture in South Africa.
This project is without doubt one of the most spectacular warehouse architectural designs I have seen anywhere in the world – the architecture is innovative, it’s bold, and it sets a benchmark for industrial architecture that will be sure to elevate the standard we expect from architects everywhere. Students will be studying this project at university, architects will be trying to emulate the creative concepts and clients will be excited at what is actually possible with their own future schemes.
Well done Elphick Proome Architects in adding yet another award to your long list of accomplishments and for continuing to set the industry standard for spectacular architecture in South Africa.
The Digest of South African Architecture, endorsed by the South African Institute of Architects, is a hefty high-quality manual published annually as a showcase and celebration of the best architectural projects that were completed in the previous year.
The 2012 Digest showcases 70 of the best architectural projects in South Africa across a range of categories and I’m rather excited that four of the projects I photographed last year are showcased in the publication. On top of that the ‘Gottlieb Group Distribution Warehouse‘ which I photographed (by Elphick Proome Architects) received an official Commendation by the SAIA, the ‘Mbombela Stadium’ (R&L Architects) which I photographed for FIFA received an Award of Merit and the ‘Investec Regional Head Office’ (by Elphick Proome Architects) also received an Award of Excellence.
The four projects which were extensively showcased in the Digest included the ‘Unilever Indosa Factory‘ in Durban by Elphick Proome Architects, the ‘Ballito Lifestyle Centre Extension‘ by Evolution Architects, the ‘COP 17 Climate Smart Cape Town Pavilion‘ by ST&AR Architects, and the ‘New Jerusalem Children’s Home‘ by 4D and A Architects.
It’s very exciting and rewarding to be involved with so many of South Africa’s leading architectural designers and to have these projects showcased in such a prestigious industry publication.
It’s been a long tough road since I got retrenched from a senior architectural position in the Middle East almost three years ago, an endless rollercoaster of financial and emotional challenges. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and sometimes recessions are good in that they force you down a path in life that you might not otherwise have had the courage to walk.
Despite the hardships I think I’m a better person now than I was three years ago; I’m stronger, I’m wiser and I’m more in tune with myself and it’s interesting how that also seems to positively affect the style and impactfulness (is that even a real word?) of the photographs I’m now taking. It is said that a photograph often reveals as much about the photographer as the subject being photographed and when I look at my own images I see that they are mostly quite dark but also very soulful, powerful and deeply introspective? I quite like where my photography is at the moment but it’s still growing and evolving and hasn’t yet got anywhere near to the place I’m still hoping to take it; it’s a voyage, a Peter Pan like adventure with no end where you keep growing, learning, exploring and getting better at doing the thing you love.
I must also this week have sent off what seems like about my 5,000th CV hoping perhaps quite desperately to just get a real job back in corporate architecture to bring some sense of stability and security to my rollercoaster life but perhaps I wonder whether the universe just doesn’t want that for me and it’s determined with some sense of dry humour to keep me on my current path through life?
As I started the week feeling a little bit desperate for myself the universe turned it all around with a call out of the blue from a prominent Milan-based magazine wanting to run a feature on me and my photography (to be published across 35 European countries and the USA at the beginning of September 2012) and I also received news that two of the projects I have photographed this year are going to be featured in the Digest of South African Architecture (the official publication of the Institute of South African Architecture) due out in the New Year – the Unilever Distribution Factory for Elphick Proome Architects and the COP17 Exhibition Stand I photographed in Durban for the City of Cape Town Climate Change Coalition.
Just another crazy and honest rollercoaster week in the life of Dennis Guichard Photography…
Following some questions I received on the Anti-Crepuscular Ray post I did yesterday I thought I’d showcase a typical before-and-after shot featuring these. The question I received was regarding whether the rays are actually visible to the eye at the time of shooting or whether it was something I did in post-processing to bring these to the fore.
I shoot all my commercial work in RAW of course and in this particular instance shot a sequence of 7 bracketed HDR shots to expose for the various levels of light. You can see from this mid-exposure capture below that the light rays are clearly visible in the sky as a series of pinkish-red light streaks. The darker the exposures are the more pronounced the rays became but of course then the foreground burnt too dark for any realistically acceptable final image. When you ‘lift’ shadows in post-processing you always get noise (grain) and chromatic aberration (colour noise) so shooting a HDR sequence and doing an as-realistic-as-possible blend is really the only way to go in instances like this.
Once the HDR composite has blended I do some quick and simple adjustments to levels and curves, contrast, and some luminosity masking to bring maximum potential to the capture. I also work in some bespoke colour spaces that help me maximise colour rendition in my imagery without having to force super-saturation into the captures. I don’t ever add things that aren’t there and rarely take away things that are so my images are within reason pretty much as I saw them with my eye at the time.
There are always arguments about the validity of post-processing in photography and those who prefer to leave their images as-shot. If you fully understand the limitations of mechanical devices like digital cameras and their inability to ever fully replicate what the human eye is capable of seeing then you’ll surely not be able to argue against the potential that post-processing and Photoshop (and similar software) can offer to bring maximum potential to any image…?!
It just goes to show that you CAN teach old dogs new tricks; seeing some work recently published by an old friend Nick Rains in Australia I learned for the first time about the atmospheric phenomenon known as Anti-Crepuscular Rays. It was like a light bulb going on in my head (as opposed to the usual voices) – I’d seen and photographed these in the past on projects I was shooting professionally but never knew what they were or how they were formed, as spectacular as they always are.
Anti-crepuscular rays are quite simply beams of sunlight that are being scattered about in the upper atmosphere because of airborne dust, high-level ice crystals, inorganic salts or small water droplets. If they radiate out directly from the direction of the sun (i.e. from behind clouds) then they are called Crepuscular Rays but if they occur on the opposite side of the sky directly away from the rising or setting sun then they are simply known as Anti-Crepuscular Rays.
When I post images like these it’s frequently not unusual for people to write in asking if they were ‘Photoshopped’ to make them look like this. I always explain that they most certainly weren’t, as I don’t quite have the skills or the patience to sit and try do that, although it’s a truth that shooting HDR certainly seems to accentuate the strength of the light show.
Although Anti-Crepuscular Rays appear to converge onto a point opposite the sun, the convergence is actually an optical illusion. The rays are in fact (almost) parallel and the apparent convergence at the anti-solar point occurs because of a simple phenomenon known as linear perspective (it’s like the use of vanishing points in architectural renderings).
Anti-Crepuscular Rays appear occasionally at sunrise and sunset (during the crepuscular / twilight hours) and are usually red or yellowish in colour. Anti-Crepuscular Rays are a lot rarer than Crepuscular Rays I am told so be sure to shoot them if you ever see any! Now you know!
dennis guichard photography 