Lights, Photos, Architecture
By Jeff Tamagini
6 Aug 2007
1. What kind of designer are you?
I am an architectural designer, digital artist, renderer and animator, and a photographer.
2. What did you want to do for a living when you were a kid?
I wanted to be an artist or a baseball player. I still secretly still want to play baseball for the Red Sox
3. What is it about your design work that makes your photography better? And vice versa? Where do you see parallels between the two?
In architecture it's definitely rendering that helps my photography. I can take a computer modeled building, set up cameras, experiment with angles, and if I don't like it I can just delete that camera and try again. I can then take my camera out with me with the knowledge of what worked and didn't work on a computer, and can apply all those same lessons to any number of photography situations. Taking photos lets me experience light in real time. I can add more light, take light away from a photo, whether it be with my camera, or with Adobe Lightroom after the fact. How light effects materials, the reflections from glass and metal, the ambient light at dusk, it all helps me in create the virtual world. Adding lighting to a rendering is the hardest thing to do, and either makes a final image look like a photo or look like it came from an 80's computer game. The parallels are endless, rendering helps me learn and understand composition, how to frame a shot and photography helps me see how the materials that I have to create in my renderings react in the real world.
4. What do you find most challenging about your work?
Everything! Architecture is so subjective, the person on your right can love what you are working on and at the exact same time the person on your left can completely hate it.
5. Do you have design heroes? Photography heroes?
In architecture, Santiago Calatrava and Renzo Piano. They have mastered light, materials and space. In photography, while it might seem a bit cliche, Ansel Adams. I have always been an admirer of his work and I just got to see a large exibit of it in person, it gave me an even greater appreciation of how he actually mastered his craft. And Peter Lik. He is an Australian photographer that does amazing nature photos that are completely saturated in color.
6. Name some unexpected sources of inspiration you've had.
Flowers. Getting outside and being able to zoom in on just one, snap a photo and get to see all the vibrant color, the light, the depth of field.
7. Do you have any regular habits/exercises that make you a better designer? Photographer?
Regular habits, no. Everyday is a learning experience, and one area of design helps me learn from the other.
