PAUL MCMULIN ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHER

Archived Article - March 2003

In the press fuelled, headlong rush to digital it is easy to forget that a large chunk of commercial work is still carried out on conventional film stock. A problem for magazine writers is that because all the action is around digital there is a dearth of newsy material concerning conventional materials. To put this further into perspective, one of the problems that wet (or analogue) photographers are having is that their smaller, local laboratories are only running E6 lines once per week or have dismantled them altogether. Professional Imagemaker has tended to reflect this situation, but to redress the balance we have spent some time with Paul McMullin, a specialist architectural and commercial photographer who is very digitally savvy but nevertheless still uses conventional cameras for the bulk of his work. Paul has a string of prestige clients including Architects, Local government agencies, rail authorities and contractors, consulting engineers and a growing list of American agencies. He is as likely to be found trackside, in high visibility gear in atrocious weather conditions, (he is qualified to work trackside, one of a small and elite band) as he is if front of one of his G4 Macs or Epson 7600.

Mcmullin His workhorse equipment consists of Hasselblads, a Fuji Panorama GX617, a Walker Titan (5"x4"), and a Nikon D100. He estimates that his usage is about 40% on the Blad and 30% for the 5x4 and the other 30% divided equally between the Nikon and Fuji. His decision on which to use is based on the requirements of the shoot and his interpretation of the brief. The Walker is about half as fast in use as the other cameras but when perspective corrections are needed it is always brought out. He is the owner of Walker Titan #006, so he was an early adopter of Mike Walker's high tech field camera, some 7 years ago (he also maintains close contact with the camera maker who is currently developing a brand new 5"x7" XL field camera to utilise Keith Canhams' new 6x17 roll film back). In the main the rising front is used, occasionally with a small amount of swing to the front standard to correct the plane of focus. Paul so rarely uses movements on the rear standard that he has recently ordered a Walker XL camera, which is fixed at the rear and is more accurate when using the extreme wide angle XL Schneider lenses( which he also purchases from Walker Cameras).

The Fuji Panorama GX617 has a film format of 6cm by 17cm giving 4 frames on a 120-film format. The lenses available are 90mm (89° Angle of View), 105mm (80.3°), 180mm (52.4°), and 300mm (32.8°). The apertures range from f/5.6 at the wide end to f/8 for the telephoto. The Copal shutters are built into each lens and have speeds from 1-1/500th second. Although the camera is quite large, it is as straightforward to use as any roll film camera. The transparencies can be scanned in-house on an Imacon Precision II, which has a special film adaptor for the Fuji Format. He manages quite well using the 105mm and a recently acquired 300mm.

Mcmulin Paul's preferred film stocks are Fuji NPS 160 and NPH 400, which he will often rate up to 800ASA for negative, and Fuji Provia F for transparency. When working with 5x4 transparency (Fuji Quickload) he will take two shots and sometimes more if he feels the view is justified and process one so that adjustments of plus or minus a third of a stop can be made if required for the processing of the subsequent sheets. He will also often Polaroid the view using the type 100 B/W sheets just to be doubly sure. His adage is "film is the cheapest commodity on a job when you take everything else into consideration so why compromise the commission and your time by worrying about the cost of a sheet of film".

Downstream from the cameras, he scans using the Imacon PII into a work-horse G4 Mac then transfers the digital file to another G4 on which manipulation work (if any) is carried out. He has recently acquired an Epson 7600, which enables him to output 24" high quality prints for corporate display work. After some skirmishes with the Matte Black Epson ink set he has fixed on the Photo Black with Premium Lustre as his preferred media option. In October last year he travelled as a guest of The Andy Cole Children's Foundation to Zambia to shoot landscapes for a calendar to promote the plight of children in Africa. The limited edition prints for the foundation were made using Somerset Enhanced art papers on the 7600.

On the digital side, a Nikon D100 is used when time is of the essence and the limits of file size are known and fixed and indeed his American clients are now insisting on everything shot digitally. The 17MB file is adequate for about 10% of all the work undertaken. The constraint on super wide shots is a problem for all architectural photographers and although watching the development of full size chips with interest he probably will not be moving over for quite some time yet.

Like all who shoot architecture for a living, Paul has to operate a flexible timetable and he finds it a constant juggle dependant on Mother Nature for the provision of interesting light. Some of his most spectacular work has been made at dusk or very early morning. Speed of working is an essential factor for this type of shoot and the Panorama Fuji has provided both the facility to operate under this pressure as well as the very special character inherent in its letterbox format. Mcmullin

The Liverpool waterfront image, taken speculatively last September, must rate as one of the best of this famous scene and because of the unique format has been used by numerous clients already. The front has recently been proposed as a World Heritage Site and with Liverpool in contention for European capital of Culture he expects many more sales of this image during 2003.

By one of those quirky co-incidences that life throws up, both our featured specialists this month worked on the same project without crossing paths and your editor has been able to put them in touch. The common denominator was the new Royal Sun Alliance building in Liverpool city centre. Voas worked on the virtual reality walkthrough at the design stage and McMullin photographed the finished job. It makes a nice ending for our feature. It's a funny World, the job started on a modern digital compact and ended on a 5x4 field camera - who says digital is taking over then! http://www.paulmcmullin.com/

Paul McMullin can be contacted via his web site at http://www.paulmcmullin.com/

Mc Mullin

Photo Quote: Mysteries lie all around us, even in the most familiar things, waiting only to be perceived. - Wynn Bullock

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