July 30, 2010

FEATURE | Site services

MARY BAXTER

Rachel Lincoln has been a construction site photographer for 17 years.

Site photographers focus on staying in the picture

MARY BAXTER

correspondent

In the first decade of her 17-year photography career, Rachel Lincoln often visited construction sites to document their progress.

She worked for general contractors and builders in southwestern Ontario and packed a four by five: a large format camera that employed individual sheets of film rather than a roll. The camera could take a colour photograph right after a black and white photo, capture a wide range of detail and — key when dealing with architecture — minimize perspective distortions.

But seven years ago, phone calls for the specialized work began to dwindle. With the advent of digital photography, builders, general contractors, engineers and architects now often use their own digital cameras to document the progress of a project, the London photographer explains.

She continues to receive orders for “beauty shots” — photographs taken once a project is complete. In June, she completed photos of the Middlesex Centre Regional Medical Clinic that opened in Ilderton, near London.

Yet the digital revolution has had its impact on this type of work, too, she says.

In the days of analog photography, time after shoots was spent in the dark room with tubs of chemicals, then providing clients with transparencies.

Today, time after shoots is spent in front of a computer with software providing services that would have been nearly unimaginable with the former technology. It may mean adding finishing touches such as landscaping that may not be complete when she is taking photos. “Or if the landscaping has been done but the grass hasn’t been laid then people want you to put the grass in,” she says. “Everybody says, ‘can you just “PhotoShop” that in?’”

The digital format means the images are used differently too, she adds. Often they are for a website. Builders might use them to put together a digital slideshow that they can use to showcase what they do. “It’s much more portable than trying to bring a bunch of pictures with them to showcase their previous build,” she says.

Graham Marshall, a Burlington-based photographer, has adapted to the shift by specializing in elevated work using either aircraft or a telescopic mast that enables him to take photos from 40 feet. “It’s sort of a niche thing,” he says, pointing out that the specialty involves extra work and equipment the average person would not have.

He began offering the service about five years ago: “I have to provide things for my customers that they can’t do for themselves or they don’t have the time to do or they don’t have the technical knowledge to do.”

Aerial photography is particularly suited to large-scale construction because it provides more information that what can be obtained from the ground, he says. Currently, Marshall is applying his specialized skills to document the construction of the 970,000 square feet Niagara Health System’s hospital in St. Catharines.

The equipment might be more expensive and he may need more than what he used to, but Marshall calls the shift to digital a good thing: “Digital has been just absolutely fantastic for the photographer to have a quality control over the end product.”

Now, like Lincoln, he spends much of his time processing photos on the computer before handing them over to the client.

William Conway, who provides progress photography services in the Greater Toronto Area, agrees most construction businesses snap “hundreds of shots” for their own database.

“But if they need specific things or they want professional quality shots that they can use in their advertising or to stick on the wall in their office, they really need a professional to do that,” he says.

Digital is more convenient than analogue photography and saves time — for everyone, he says. Earlier in his career he would first meet with a client to show his portfolio then go out and get the shots, choose the final images with clients using proofs and, finally, have them printed.

Now, people hire him after seeing his work on a website and he sends the completed shots on a DVD.

He may never meet clients face-to-face or speak to them.

Conway has recently been hired on by Vanbots, a division of Carillion Construction Inc., to document the restoration of Union Station.

Construction photography “provides a permanent pictorial record” of a building’s development and provides all of those involved “the ability to review the state of construction at varying intervals of the work,” he says. Such documentation becomes key “during the transformation of a heritage site” such as the Union Station revitalization.

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