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According to Wikipedia, “Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of responsibility, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of stewardship, the responsible management of resource use. In ecology, sustainability describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time, a necessary precondition for the well-being of humans and other organisms.

Human sustainability interfaces with economics through the voluntary trade consequences of economic activity. Moving towards sustainability is also a social challenge that entails, among other factors, international and national law, urban planning and transport, local and individual lifestyles and ethical consumerism. Ways of living more sustainably can take many forms from controlling living conditions (e.g., ecovillages, eco-municipalities and sustainable cities), to reappraising work practices (e.g., using permaculture, green building, sustainable agriculture), or developing new technologies that reduce the consumption of resources.”

I’ve lost count of the requests I get from magazines seeking to educate and inform the public on the popular topic of sustainable architecture. We simply love your images but as “we’re a not-for-profit publication” I’m afraid we don’t have a budget for licensing content we publish. So can you just give them to us for nothing? Of course we’d like you to sign this release to allow us use of the images for our printed edition, our electronic edition and also for the downloadable subscription edition archived on our website. Then there’s our Flickr pool, our Facebook page and our Twitter feed. We’ll even credit you!

So tell me, I ask, do you get your electricity for free, did the telephone company just hook up the line you’re calling me from, does the printer donate the paper and his time, does the delivery guy get by on fresh air? Are you working there for nothing? (awkward sound of crickets chirping on the end of the line…)

Because that is exactly what you’re asking me to do.

Like any business, photographers have operating costs too. We’re not making any profit until we meet those basic operating costs. Sending out our work for use by others, particularly when that use generates income (whether directly through sales, or indirectly through advertising click throughs) for somebody else, is tantamount to financial suicide. Strangely, a photo credit doesn’t curry much favour with my banker.

In a practical sense, I wonder how this business model would be greeted at the local grocery store?

Publisher – “I’ll have that carton of milk please”

Grocer – “That’ll be $2.50 thanks.”

Publisher – “Tell you what… I’ll just take it for nothing, shall I? But rest assured, I’ll tell everyone I meet where I got the milk. It’ll be such great exposure for you”

Grocer – “Are you out of your fu%#@*g mind?”

By way of illustration, I was recently forwarded this book cover by an architect client, asking if I’d licensed this usage. Neither the architect or the project, which was photographed seven years ago, had been credited and he was quite understandably bothered by this omission. While I had been credited with the image, I’d not been contacted about the use and of course, had received no compensation for the use on the cover. Further investigation revealed that the image had been passed from one publisher to another (and possibly to another). My feeling is that the architect may have signed a release for a single use several years ago that has somehow been exploited by the original publisher.

Private Residence, Inverness, California             Studios Architecture

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for supporting the notion of green technology, of environmentally responsible design, of a better and mutually beneficial world. I just don’t think I should be the only one subsidizing it. So when people tell me that they are pursuing the idea of sustainable architecture, I’ve taken to responding that I’m pursuing the idea of sustainable architectural photography.

In my own modest way, I too, am going for green.

While shooting a series of developments in Dongguan City, I kept seeing this poster for VW Golf’s. When the opportunity arose I couldn’t help but offer some practical advice to the wayward photographer in the jacket. Seems he couldn’t focus accurately with the sunglasses on.

At least he looked cool.

I was explaining the annoying stereotyping of the photographer to my amused Chinese hosts, hoping that they wouldn’t expect to see me the next day in a cream sports jacket.

“And what car do you drive Mr Giff”, they inquired.

“Erm…..,” I mumbled, …… a Golf.

There’s always something nice about getting high. Wait, let me start that again.

Whenever I can, I like to get high. No, no that’s not it.

It’s not everyday that your hotel room has five numbers in it.

This was indeed the case when I recently had an opportunity to spend a few nights at the new Ritz-Carlton, perched atop Kohn Pedersen Fox’s International Commerce Center in Hong Kong.

Even though I know the city pretty well, the new views were mesmerizing. The chance to set up a few cameras recording time-lapse sequences of the constant activity on the harbor was too good to pass up.

Breakfast on the 102nd floor provided stunning view across to Hong Kong Island. I could have stayed there all day but more earthly endeavors beckoned, albeit from several hundred feet below.

In our ongoing documentation of the tower for KPF, we were looking to capture new views of the canopies above the building entrances. Using the dramatic overhangs to frame views of the Hong Kong skyline reinforced  the central position of the building within the bustling harbor.

While scouting out the locations, I noticed in the ashtrays, a few stylistic similarities to a previous project by the same firm we had photographed, albeit at a somewhat smaller scale. Referencing the original circular design of the aperture, of course.

ICC Ashtray

Shanghai World Financial Center

Another angle I was looking for was an overview from Hong Kong Island. “Looks like rain” warned my assistant Mr Wood as we plodded along the path to our vantage point. “Unbeliever!” I retorted, quickening my pace and casting a furtive glance up through the trees. “What could possibly go wrong?” We set up early, in anticipation of a glorious sunset, which unsurprisingly, given the thickening clouds, didn’t happen.

With the building disappearing completely at times behind the rolling cloud, we hung out as the scene darkened. Then just as the lights of the city came to life, an opening in the western sky gave us the bright reflection we needed to make our project jump out across the harbor.

Ominous, fat drops began to dot the pavement around us as we quickly packed the bags and dashed back down the trail to shelter. Twenty steps from the taxi rank, the long awaited thunderstorms let loose . “That was close..” observed Mr Wood, as we headed home in the downpour.

“Unbeliever!” I smiled.

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Just think of the creative possibilities.

Following on from our work on the award winning Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley, architects Leddy Maytum Stacy commissioned us to create a short video piece to accompany an article in Architectural Record August 2011 issue. Though not our first foray into motion, this was certainly a wonderful opportunity to tell the story of the architecture from the perspective of those people who use it everyday.

The five minute cut of the film can be seen here in full HD.

As the only commercial airport located in a National Park, Jackson Hole Airport in Wyoming has a mandated requirement to stay pretty low key. This created some interesting challenges for the design team at the Denver office of Gensler in their renovation and expansion of the existing terminal. Of course, with a backdrop of the dramatic Grand Tetons range, remaining rather insignificant in the whole scheme of things isn’t such a stretch.

After postponing the previous week’s arrival, we’d landed the previous day in pouring rain, with heavy clouds hanging low over the Snake River valley, obscuring the scale of the nearby peaks. Apparently it had been a very wet Spring so far, with very little sunshine to speak of. Rivers and streams were swollen from the recent storms, the winter snows had barely begun their inevitable melt. But, the local optimists opined, Wednesday could be good.

Overnight, the weather miraculously cleared and we headed out before dawn to catch the first light hitting the mountains. Rounding a bend at the north end of Jackson, you get your first glimpse up the expanse of the valley with the majestic Grand Tetons stretching towards the horizon. What a fabulous way to start the day!

I was looking for a view that really presented the airport as a simple linear gesture in the extraordinary landscape. We’d scoped out a potential position the day before but couldn’t be sure the light was going to do as I wanted. Without the reflected highlight on the leading edge of the airport roof, the structure would simply disappear. I needed the early morning reflection but not the direct light that would give too much detail to the valley floor.

Barely sunrise and we had our first shot in the bag.

The extraordinary Elrod House, designed for Arthur Elrod in 1968 by John Lautner was another Palm Springs icon we were fortunate to photograph during the PSPF workshop.  Perched high on the ridge at the south end of town, the Elrod House affords panoramic views across the  entire valley.

In a famously cheesy scene from Diamonds Are Forever, James Bond definitely meets his match in the form of Bambi and Thumper who to beat the crap out of him before tossing him into the terrace pool.

It used to be so easy. Just cock the spring shutter and trigger the release…  Nowadays it’s all cables and computers, preview screens and profiles. Occasionally though, usually by complete accident, all that technical wizardry produces a little spontaneous magic of its own.

Here’s me and Phase One making a hash of Moneo’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.

Appraising the results however, makes me think there might be very little difference between high art and and a total screw up, other than a fabulous curatorial essay.

Here’s Thomas Ruff making a hash art of Mies Van der Rohe’s Bauhaus House. In this case, Ruff didn’t actually take the original image. Rather, he appropriated the original image from archival material.

In a 2001 interview with Ronald Jones that appeared in Artforum, Ruff explained “So I began shooting those buildings too, but I couldn’t photograph all of them–some were obstructed by trees or by traffic and parked cars. So another mode appeared: using archival material. At first I thought I might hand-color some old black-and white prints, but in the end I did all the alterations on the computer.”

w.h.s. 01, Bauhaus House, from the L.M.V.D.R. Series, 2000/2004 ©Thomas Ruff

Art.

d.b.p.02, Barcelona Pavillion, from the L.M.V.D.R. Series, 2000/2004  ©Thomas Ruff

Actual Art Speak – “He interferes with the stark neutrality of certain of his architectural photos with more painterly versions of the same building, while his use of blurring effects, whether produced with the lens or computer manipulation, triggers an association with the photographically realist paintings of artists such as Gerhard Richter.” Tate Magazine online.

Technical Error.

Fictional Art Speak – As part of an ongoing personal exploration into the perceived veracity of digital recording, the artist has purposefully intervened in the process to corrupt the accepted methodology of high resolution digital capture, highlighting the inherent instability and potential inaccuracies of the medium we, as a culture, hold to represent the truth. This deep-seated distrust of accepted societal norms references back to the artists’s early childhood when he, after drinking a glass of milk and despite being told it could not be done, was unexpectedly able to issue forth streams of milk from his nose while being tickled.

Actual Fact  - I hit the wrong button at the wrong time and the pixel wells were exposed again as the initial signals were draining from the chip. D’oh!

Further from Artforum interview, Ruff continues…

“In this way, I have tried to do a contemporary-art exhibition about architecture from the past, using every technique available to contemporary photography. The computer is a great new tool for photography, an extension of the darkroom, allowing you to alter color, resolution, parts of the image, or even the whole thing. For the Krefeld show I was playing with issues surrounding the documentary aspects of architectural photography. What was in front of the camera is not what you see in the images, because I altered about 90 percent of them. In some I took out the color and made a new sky. In one there appears to be a ghost (is it Mies?), which was originally a bad exposure that I guided into an intention, let’s say.”

Looking back through my very own archives and guided, let’s say, by whimsical intention, I too sought to find some art amongst the digital trash.

Wrecked  Richter 2008  ©Tim Griffith

Miro Miro on the Wall 2010  ©Tim Griffith

Frozen Fishsticks 2010  ©Tim Griffith

Griffimoto DNA II Series 2008  ©Tim Griffith

The Elusive Striped Zebra 2009  ©Tim Griffith

100 on the Richter Scale 2005  ©Tim Griffith

Pointless III  2008    ©Tim Griffith

Pointless IV  2011    ©Tim Griffith

It’s not everyday your tripod throws a literal wobbly and requires a makeshift repair. Of course it had to be the day I’d ventured further above the ground than ever before. Fortunately, I was able to find a makeshift solution amongst the army of contractors still prowling the upper reaches of the tower to get myself temporarily tightened up.

The only potential downside to this solution was brought home later in the day when we descended to ground level, smack into the middle of a star-studded concert taking place around the adjacent lakeside. Royal attendance meant that security was extremely visible and extremely tight. Visions of Edward Fox flashed across my mind and I’ve never felt more aware of carrying an ambiguously set tripod as when we made our way through the swelling crowds to the car park.

Fortunately, we were the only ones who got off a successful shot that day.

*Spackle – a temporary filler

Wandering along the waterfront in Hong Kong, I was tempted by an opportune railing, to try out a time lapse sequence I’d been considering. Without any way of locking the camera still, I made do with simply gripping it firmly in hand for the requisite twenty minutes or so. All went reasonably well, or so I thought, until I assembled the sequence and saw my slow drift to the right.

Next day I got it together with a few alternative angles.