A R Harvey Blog

Regents Canal Tunnel

The above photo was a happy accident.

A few weeks back I was scouting canal locations for a fashion shoot. Towards the end of the day I found myself following the slow twists and turns of the Regents Canal, heading west towards Maida Vale. As soon as I entered this particular tunnel I spotted the mysterious figures up ahead. Only a few seconds remained before they reached open air. I sensed an opportunity... Quickly I lifted my camera and fired off a shot, still moving as I did so. Amazingly, the darkness of the tunnel balanced the brightness of the water's reflection, and my camera's autoexposure algorithms landed square in the middle to deliver a perfect exposure.

A second later, the moment had passed.

Highland Winter

For Christmas I travelled back up to my parents home in the Highlands of Scotland. It didn't actually snow at all while I was there; instead the sub-zero temperatures and still air preserved what had fallen a week or so earlier.

Kyashii

Kyashii is a new Japanese restaurant on Upper St Martin's Lane, London.

The above aerial shot was taken from the outside looking in, high up a 9m ladder. Most of us have climbed the odd step to reach a shelf or perhaps do some painting. I will tell you now - climbing a 9m builder's ladder at midnight in the middle of the West End is a completely different affair.

I think the following picture perfectly illustrates the scales involved. We ain't reaching for mother's cookies here.

But first, how does one actually go about extending such a tall ladder? This is not really something you consider until the moment arrives, and you suddenly find yourself stuck for ideas. There's obviously a knack yet I'm no workman. In the end it was a three person job - two to extend the ladder and another to help guide it into place.

Actually climbing the ladder was the next challenge. Not only did I have to scale a height far greater than any I had ever climbed before, I had to do this with my camera.

Strange primal instincts suddenly assert themselves: The rational mind knows that the ladder won't slip, neither will it fall backwards. But when you climb a ladder like that for the first time, all sorts of crazy thoughts take over: The ladder feels precarious, creaking and flexing with every slow, deliberate step upwards. You press your entire body into the metal. Are the locks fully fastened? Are the metal runners - which hug one stage of the ladder to the next - completely secure? You don't look down.

I had slung my camera around my neck and left arm. This was the easiest way to make the ascent without bashing nearly £3k of equipment. Once at the top though I then faced the challenge of pulling my camera into position. What would have been a trivial motion on the ground suddenly became an arduous maneuver 9m up. I had to somehow free my arm and shoulder from the camera strap. I felt like a contortionist performing in slow-motion, wowing an unseen circus audience silenced in awe below.

When my feet eventually returned to the solid assurance of pavement, I immediately loaded the pictures onto my laptop. They were magnificent. Suddenly one of the clients pointed towards the bottom-left corner of the frame: The restaurant's curious glass facade had somehow produced a freak reflection of the alfresco dining area outside. Scattered on the ghostly tables were the remains of our evening meal.

It was now nearly 1am in the morning. I walked back to the ladder and prepared for my second climb of the night...

Towering Verticals

Here are a couple of photos from a recent commission for GIHLondon.

Tall buildings, such as those presented here, can be rather tricky to capture. London streets are often tight and awkward, and even with a 24mm tilt-shift lens it can be a struggle fitting everything in.

Both of these buildings required two shots - one levelled off, the second tilted up. I then manually stitched the photos together in Photoshop. Small tilts can be corrected with PTLens - you simply dial in the angle and the software does the rest. The finished result appears as though it was taken with a remarkably wide tilt-shift lens, or a large format camera.

Sundown in Victoria Park

Model: Daisy Jo Lucas.

Victoria Park has never struck me as a particularly good place to shoot: The landscape is flat and uninspiring, the trees are widely scattered; and when the sun shines everyone decides to crowd the same space. For all it's faults though it is convenient, just five minutes walk from my front door. In the past I have lost myself - and sometimes, my team - in the rolling hills of Hampstead Heath, where just walking to a location can take twenty minutes. One is rewarded though with a huge variety of pastoral backdrops. If you squint your eyes and filter out the rumble of distant traffic, you can transport yourself beyond the city to a vast wilderness untouched yet by man.

Last week I spent a day with actress Daisy Jo Lucas. We took some photos at my studio in Hackney then moved outside for a series of more natural shots. Victoria Park may on the whole be rather bland, but there is one tiny enclave of interest: The earth dips downward and the trees huddle against the sun. Above and to the west there is an open sky. Come evening the glow of dying sunlight floods the trees and kisses the ground.

I knew we wouldn't have long to get the shot so I packed light. Aside from my camera all I took was a white bounce board. Now that summer has arrived I am able to use natural light far more freely. There is a wonderful simplicity that comes with using the sun - the ratio between key and fill is almost entirely down to the distance one places the bounce board from the subject. Just one variable really. All that's left is to set a suitable exposure and do the best with what's given.

Even at sundown the sun is very strong. One trick is to use the sun as a back light, and turn the bounce light into a key:

The Presidential Suite at No. 11

Interior design: Paul Davies London.

Recently I wrote about No. 11 Cadogan Gardens - a new luxury boutique hotel and private members club, tucked away in the streets of Knightsbridge.

Their newest and grandest suite is The Presidential Suite, a chocolatier's fantasy of luxurious creams, cocoa browns, delicate golds and wickedly indulgent blacks.

Luxury Apartment by Paul Davies London

Informal reception.

Interior design team: Paul Davies, Paul Goddard and Olivia White.

Paul Davies is a Monaco-based interior designer and property developer with offices in Mayfair, London. This luxurious Hyde Park apartment is his company's latest creation. The space is impressive: Five bedrooms, two receptions - formal and informal, kitchen, dining room, study, six bathrooms, his and her changing rooms... and even an elevator. Not only that, but every room has it's own distinctive style.

The pictures presented here are from a much larger collection that took myself and Olivia three whole days to capture.

The subsequent retouching process was very technical: Since I was using wide angle lenses - including a 24mm tilt-shift lens to preserve the verticals - lens distortion was unavoidable. Correcting for this digitally, the rooms would suddenly "pop" and attain a new sense of depth. Artificial and natural light sources were also balanced by neutralizing orange casts and bleaching the blue sunlight.

Study.

Master bedroom.

Master bedroom.

One of the five bedrooms.

Kitchen.

Chandelier, informal reception. There are numerous such fixtures throughout the apartment.

A few pictures within the collection are also composites; that is, different exposures taken from the same position and angle, combined to preserve both shadow and highlight detail (see example below.)

Charing Cross Road, Painting with Light

Charing Cross Road (long exposure). Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L tilt-shift lens.

Car head lights render the buildings with a painterly light. Pedestrians evaporate from the sidewalk.

In the dark our eyes lose their sensitivity to colour. Bright lights dazzle us. Yet the camera can see beyond this, revealing colour and detail that moments before was hidden to our senses.