Rob is a self taught photographer specializing in architectural photography with clients ranging from architects, interior designers, premier residential builders, major construction firms and developers. He founded his company, Faulkner Studios, in 1980.

Rob was a visionary in 1993 when he realized that digital was the future of photography. That year he purchased a drum scanner and digital printer. This move to scanning images and printing digitally paved the path to digital capture, now the exclusive way he photographs. Rob is also an advocate and dedicated user of color management.

Rob's work has appeared in over 100 publications. He lives in East Brunswick, NJ with his wife, Patricia, and two spoiled cats, Jackson and Muschie.

www.faulknerstudios.com

My philosophy of lighting architectural spaces is to always augment the existing lighting, although I sometimes like to jazz up rather bland lighting. Controlling the contrast is the biggest factor for lighting any architectural space!!! It is a problem not generally present in other photography endeavors in such extremes.

The time of day for these kinds of shots is critical; we call it "Blue Hour" or "Magic Hour". There is usually only a five minute window and all the lighting and styling needs to ready in advance.

We use a mix of DP and Pro-lights and we used five or six lights in these shots. That is normal but we will often use more depending on the scope of the shot. I generally use the both types of lights with a diffuser and barn doors in a direct/spot mode and close down the barn doors and use the focus as a dimmer.

We also bounce them against the wall or ceiling as a fill. Seldom do we use umbrellas although this shot was an exception. The Pro lights are used to spot small pieces of furniture, to open up small shadow areas. and for rim, edge, and reflective lighting.

What I mean by reflective lighting is that we sometimes need to use reflections in dark furniture, side tables, book cases, chairs etc. to keep them from appearing to be a dark abyss. It is a way to visually add some dimension to an area that would otherwise have no detail and be lifeless. A lot of furniture these days is actually black with no grain or detail so giving it something to reflect helps to add a sense of dimension to an otherwise black area of the shot.

We use tungsten lights as much as possible. Most architectural photographers would rather use tungsten than strobe. Strobe is very difficult to control and

tends to overtake the ambient/architectural lighting present. We will often gel the windows just so we can use tungsten. I rarely mix color temperatures but I am looking to explore this more often.

The client wanted the photograph to portray the same spatial feeling between the interior and the skyline view as one would experience upon entering the room. When you first enter the space, the view of Manhattan is visually overwhelming. However, since a wide angle lens makes the view such a small component of the shot, the actual view of the skyline was shot from the roof at blue hour with a longer lens and later stripped in. So yes, the skyline was the real view!