PhotomediaVR.com’s photographic shooting services are awesome. What is the secret of great photography? Lighting. This combined with great composition, top quality equipment (with both film and digital platforms) and highly skilled people. Read on!
PhotomediaVR.com’s two in-house studios give us great ability and versatility for shooting still images on film and hi-rez digital, as well as low-rez digital and video. As you will see, we are fully equipped to handle every job.
Our main studio is 3,000 square feet with 18 foot ceilings. It has a full length shooting mezzanine twelve feet above the floor, and is equipped with a removable 12 foot high by 25 foot long green chroma key background for digital special effects.
Our small studio is 23 by 35 feet and is totally painted black. The ceilings are 12 foot high and the most unique feature is a 4x6 foot cut out near the middle of the ceiling that we use as a direct overhead and oblique shooting access. It is designed to facilitate ordinarily difficult shooting angles for architectural models, office sets, and overhead views of large equipment huge artwork, etc...
We are fully equipped with still camera equipment from 35mm to 8x10 view cameras. Most of our photography is done with 120 format Mamiya RZ 67, Pentax 6x7 and Horseman 4x5 view camera for maximum quality as many of our projects require prints to sizes well over 30 x 40 inches.
- We have a 120 format, rotating lens Panoramic camera with 146 degree view. Look in our Architectural Gallery for some examples with this awesome tool.
- Our Digital cameras include 4x5 and Medium format Phase One cameras, capable of producing digital files up to 100 mb. Their quality is outstanding.
- A year ago we added Digital Video to our capabilities for Virtual Reality, web and video productions. We have full shooting and editing capability on our Mac G3’s and G4’s.
- Lighting is well covered as well. Our Electronic Flash (strobe) equipment is all Elinchrom and it ranges from 4000ws high power packs to 1000 ws portables and 500 ws high speed units. Accessories include booms, grids, soft boxes, etc... Tungsten lighting is mostly by Lowell and Arri, and again, we are fully quipped to handle most any project.
When we moved into our new studio a little over nine years ago, we started buying new equipment with total versatility in mind. All of our still camera equipment and lighting equipment that works so well in the studio, can be packed and transported for use on location. We have cases to air ship our cameras and lighting equipment. For driving distance shoots, we have a 4 wheel drive Chevy Suburban which we also use as an elevated platform to get us a view over the foreground obstacles.
Perhaps the only technique that we use on location more than we use in the studio is called “Painting with Light”. This involves a continuous movement of a tungsten light (although we have done it with strobe as well) to more evenly light a large area without leaving shadows. In an architectural photography situation, the architects lighting is what is important - not the photographers lighting, which should “disappear” in the shot. Look at the Sheraton Hotel photo for an example of this technique.
We are currently running our Photographic Color Printing with the Kodak RA-4 process with a 52 inch Colex processor. Our two main color printing darkrooms are equipped with seven enlargers with capabilities from wallet size to 40 x 60 inches and one set up for enlargements to We also print backlit images. We also print backlit images (Duratrans) as large as 4 x 8 feet (all, of course, in one piece).
At PhotomediaVR.com, we also use our small studio access, described above, as an enlarger projection hole to expose our large photographic murals in a single exposure. Our largest to date include a 12 foot square mural for Syracuse University (done in three 48 inch by 12 foot panels) and an 8 foot by 30 foot mural of a panoramic night view for the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) Convention in Las Vegas.
Black and White Printing is predominantly done on Ilford Multigrade Paper with an Ilford RC processor. We regularly produce Black and White prints as large as 4 x 8 feet.
Copy / Processing / Historic Restoration
PhotomediaVR.com’s “One Stop Philosophy” not only includes all Photographic printing done in-house, but all processing as well. We have “dip and dunk” processing for C-41 and rotary equipment for E-6 and Black and White. We’ve made the production of copy negatives, Internegatives, and copy transparencies into a top quality art. One of our specialties is the reproduction and restoration of historic photographs which we do both as photographic processes, digital processes and/or a combination of both. These can be produced as Black and White of Sepia (old fashion brown toned) prints.
Call and ask about any of these services!
Now that we have told you about all of our great shooting and production skills, go take a look at our Architectural Gallery to see how we have created solutions for some of our clients!
One of PhotomediaVR.com’s goals is to get our clients to decorate their reception areas, conference rooms, and corridors (and homes) with either their dramatic corporate imagery, or original photographic art of local scenes. Take a look at some of our work in our Fine Arts Gallery!
