Images courtesy Christopher Frederick Jones. The above image of M3 Architecture’s Nudgee College Boarding Village is cropped for site formatting, view the full image below. Article by ADR contributor, Emily Taliangis.

Renowned Australian architectural photographer Christopher Frederick Jones is the only Australian to be shortlisted in the Arcaid International Architectural Photography Awards, part of the World Architecture Festival.

Out of only 20 shortlisted photographs, two belong to Christopher – an impressive achievement considering the competitive nature of the awards, and the calibre of shortlisted photographs.

ADR spoke to Christopher about his technical process and the artistic inspirations behind his stunning photographs, taken using a medium format digital camera, built for technical and highly defined architectural photography.

Gold Coast Aquatic Centre by Cox Rayner. Photography © Christopher Frederick Jones

“The first picture was part of a commission to photograph the Gold Coast Aquatic Centre for Cox Rayner. I really like working with backlighting and strong shadows, and the rising early morning sun provided beautiful backlighting to the diving boards,” Christopher says.

“We got the lifeguard on duty to strip off for us and climb onto the diving board, which I thought was very important to give the picture scale. The linearity of the swimming pool helped with that picture, too, as does the long elevation towards the back, which is the changing rooms, and the window reveals of the building pushed off to the left. There are three actual swimming pools there and each one has been framed by the architecture.”

“It’s got lovely pastel tones to it, with those morning shadows. Morning light’s always the best. Absolutely.”

The second image was part of a commission to photograph M3 Architecture’s newly refurbished Nudgee College Boarding Village. Surrounding the central courtyard, the building provides the perfect frame for Christopher’s photograph. Again, Christopher utilised natural lighting to help bring the inverted membrane structure to life, and natural backlighting to create fantastic shadows.

M3 Architecture’s Nudgee College Boarding Village, uncropped. Photography © Christopher Frederick Jones

“The pictures are polar opposites,” says Christopher. “The first one is early morning and the second one is late afternoon. I love the tone of the dive one, but I love the shadows of the school one.”

Though the primary focal point of both photographs is the architecture, ADR asked Christopher about his decision to include people in each of the works.

“It’s very much in vogue at the moment. In architectural photography years ago it was taboo to have people in the shots, but now most of my clients prefer it. I think it works really well because it instantly helps provide scale to a space. Also it helps describe what the use of an architectural space is. A lot of the time, people can actually make the difference between an ordinary architectural photograph and something that’s quite lovely.”

And how does Christopher feel about the eighteen photographs he’s up against?

“I’m pretty proud but I’m up against some wonderful architectural photographers from all over the world. We’ll see how I go.”

The overall winner will be announced in Singapore at the World Architecture Festival Gala Awards Dinner, 6 November 2015.

www.arcaidaawards.com

cfjphoto.com.au