Otto Berkeley
Dorset Rise
Tucked away inside the Premier Inn London Blackfriars is this stunning nine-storey spiral staircase.
I had seen several takes on the location over the years, captured from various angles and with different interpretations, and wanted to add my take on the view looking upwards. The hotel was converted by developer Whitbread in late 2011 out of an office block and is billed as a modern, no-frills destination, so I thought it might be interesting to try to incorporate that sense of clean minimalism into the image. The shot was blended from several exposures and captured in the early evening, minimising the amount of light streaming through the building's windows and allowing me to experiment with several vantage points without getting in the way of hotel guests (who seemed equally in awe of the architecture while I was shooting and would pause with their suitcases to take photos on their phones).
At the editing stage, I wanted to emphasise the staircase's elegance and simplicity, so I chose to remove a small hatch at the centre of the hotel roof and to shift the white balance towards a cooler finish with only a hint of the warmth within the highlights. I blended elements from the brighter exposures quite liberally -- particularly along the underside of the staircase -- in order to create a high-key finish, but at the same time tried to retain as much of the staircase's texture as possible along the underside of the first floor in the foreground; this was partly because I felt it would draw the viewer's eye towards the brighter centre of the image, and partly because I liked the subtle tactile detail along the surface.
You can also connect with me on Facebook, 500px, Google+ and Instagram.
Dorset Rise
Tucked away inside the Premier Inn London Blackfriars is this stunning nine-storey spiral staircase.
I had seen several takes on the location over the years, captured from various angles and with different interpretations, and wanted to add my take on the view looking upwards. The hotel was converted by developer Whitbread in late 2011 out of an office block and is billed as a modern, no-frills destination, so I thought it might be interesting to try to incorporate that sense of clean minimalism into the image. The shot was blended from several exposures and captured in the early evening, minimising the amount of light streaming through the building's windows and allowing me to experiment with several vantage points without getting in the way of hotel guests (who seemed equally in awe of the architecture while I was shooting and would pause with their suitcases to take photos on their phones).
At the editing stage, I wanted to emphasise the staircase's elegance and simplicity, so I chose to remove a small hatch at the centre of the hotel roof and to shift the white balance towards a cooler finish with only a hint of the warmth within the highlights. I blended elements from the brighter exposures quite liberally -- particularly along the underside of the staircase -- in order to create a high-key finish, but at the same time tried to retain as much of the staircase's texture as possible along the underside of the first floor in the foreground; this was partly because I felt it would draw the viewer's eye towards the brighter centre of the image, and partly because I liked the subtle tactile detail along the surface.
You can also connect with me on Facebook, 500px, Google+ and Instagram.