p.5 #1 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
Bifurcator wrote:
No I meant that studio photographers who know what they're doing in business as well as their trade are still around and just as healthy as automobile makers. Lots of customers, lots products being manufactured. The economy may be down a bit but boutique startups are not drowning them - again IF they know what they're doing.
BTW, CGI has already surpassed product and architectural photography in terms of both IQ and dynamic versatility. That's my field and I know it well. It has it's place in landscape photography too.
That's not what I have seen. Over the past 10-15 years, what used to be the typical commercial studio market has severely constricted and what you have left is the very, very high end in larger markets with medium to small markets pretty much vanishing or severely diminished. I was a studio manager of a commercial studio in a medium sized market maybe 15 years ago and saw this occurring first hand. Many businesses and large catalog houses moved all their work in house while others decided to get by with lesser quality work and simply stopped paying the sort of rates that are required to support a studio. The squeeze forced many studios to close. In some ways, digital was really the final nail in the coffin for these medium to smaller markets as every inexperienced hack with a camera would under bid jobs (not having to support the overhead of a studio) and the clients for the most part placed little value on long term relationships and quality photography. The very high end market is different because the client is more educated as to the worth/ value of good photography.
p.5 #2 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
sirimiri wrote:
For what, though? Built work or envisioned work?
CGI has not surpassed architectural photography... It may be able to come close, but with some attention to the image you can still tell the one from the other.
Plus, industry budgets for CGI work are spend in concept work; photo shoots of the actual project still record Architecture once it's finished.
p.5 #3 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
dasrocket wrote:
Plus, industry budgets for CGI work are spend in concept work; photo shoots of the actual project still record Architecture once it's finished.
+1
Moreover, from a marketing standpoint, photos of built work are more valuable as an asset, because it illustrates that one actually *does* have built work, and not solely (often) provocative, yet typically theoretical paper (now digital) architecture like Lebbeus Woods, or hell even Daniel Libeskind before he actually got some body of work constructed.
p.5 #4 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
Out of personal and recent experience CGI canīt replace photography. I have been looking for a new smartphone this week. The new Samsung Galaxy S3 was one of the top contenders. I wanted to go with a black phone, the S3 is available in blue or white only. The offical images are only CGI and i only found photos of the white version. This put me off and finally decided to get a phone from another company.
p.5 #6 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
CGI has been replacing photography in a number of areas for quite a while already. So it's kind of impossible to say that it can't or hasn't. Architectural shots of both planned and existing structures as well as product shots are the strengths of CG. And if you think you can tell the difference you're either looking at a beginner's work or some stylized rendering. Even most beginners come really close to photorealism these days. The tools are advanced enough now that it makes it pretty easy. The artist only needs to study a little bit about how real world surfaces interact with light to nail it. Here's a few typical beginner's shots from just the first link that came up in a search.
I think even tho it's from a beginner it's quite difficult to tell if it's CG or a photograph and it's a simple matter for someone like myself to produce this level of work. I've seen many photographs look more "fake" than these renderings - and these are 100% CG. The advantage to using CG over photography is both setup and resolution obviously. Resolution is only limited my render-time these days. And if you want a shot to look different with different lighting, or change the surface colors and textures it's just a few slider adjustments. If you wanna do that in photography you have to wait for the weather, spend a few hours setting up your lights, and or give up when you realize the cost of resurfacing entire buildings or whatever. Don't confuse yourselves by thinking of CG as it was 15 years ago. Today and for the past 7 years or more it's quite photorealistically competent!
On the topic of studio photographers I maintain my initial comment. If they know what they're doing in business then they're still around if they want or can make it as a startup with only the usual business worries. They probably also do CG these days as well as have a few flunkies in a corner somewhere with a lightbox doing catalogue shots on a rig like was shown on the previous page. When I look at the town pages (Business yellow pages) I see very very many listings - about the same as I saw in the 80's and in the 90's and in the 00's. The online listings for studio photographers are probably long enough to replace all of the text on this site letter for letter. If's that's a dead or dying industry then I stand corrected for sure. IMO however it's thriving - of course taking into consideration the current state of the western economies.
p.5 #7 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
dasrocket wrote:
Bif, the samples above are not CGI, they are post processed.
! See... told ya. Those are RENDERED in 3DMax 2011 and Vray 1.5.
They are as I said, 100% CG. Shrubbery, grass, snow, everything. Although the sky may or may not be photography in some of them. Often the sky is an HDR photo used as a light-dome.
p.5 #8 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
Yeah I just looked at some of his other work. Really great stuff; wish we could afford him (and the time it takes to get these done)! Typically, we have 1-2 weeks to produce an entire building!
p.5 #9 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
Sure, and there's many many more guys like him out there. Mostly it's only a few hundred per shot. Set-up time for modeling and texturing something like one of those is only a day or two if the cad data is available. If it's from blueprints it takes longer tho. Maybe add a week.
p.5 #10 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
Bifurcator wrote:
On the topic of studio photographers I maintain my initial comment. If they know what they're doing in business then they're still around if they want or can make it as a startup with only the usual business worries. They probably also do CG these days as well as have a few flunkies in a corner somewhere with a lightbox doing catalogue shots on a rig like was shown on the previous page. When I look at the town pages (Business yellow pages) I see very very many listings - about the same as I saw in the 80's and in the 90's and in the 00's. The online listings for studio photographers are probably long enough to replace all of the text on this site letter for letter. If's that's a dead or dying industry then I stand corrected for sure. IMO however it's thriving - of course taking into consideration the current state of the western economies.
The difference, which is not often seen in a yellow page listing, is that where once many of those listings actually represented real, full time physical studios, they now are just a guy and a camera who might rent a studio as needed (in the best case scenario). Jae is right in that the paradigm has changed for most working, commercial photographers. In the markets I mentioned, rates have stagnated and often even decreased since the early/mid 90's or so with regard to commercial photo studios, at least in the U.S.
p.5 #11 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
Nice renders you found, Bif. The only nit there is the piles of snow -- they don't look like that in reality :-) The foliage in the top left of the first image is also a bit suspect...
p.5 #12 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
The second CGI of Bif's examples (with the snow) also shows shadows from the railings in the front, as well as highlights, but the building appears back lit. I think if you look closely, shadow/ direction of light issues can be seen with most (which would horrify an Architect).
p.5 #13 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
Maybe I'm the only one but when I was evaluating the Manhattan rental market, I essentially ignored all the renders because they looked fake.
It made me not bother even contacting those agencies unless they had real photos because I didn't want to waste my time with properties that might have been so shitty they had to computer generate the images. I guess I'm not the only one though as my other peers essentially told me the same.
p.5 #14 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
I'm curious as to why someone rendering a scene from scratch would include a bunch of distracting twigs poking in from one side (image 2). Precisely the sort of element i would go to software to remove, not add.
p.5 #15 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
15Bit wrote:
I'm curious as to why someone rendering a scene from scratch would include a bunch of distracting twigs poking in from one side (image 2). Precisely the sort of element i would go to software to remove, not add.
Just as the distracting reflections (some of which look really fake) were added in one of the other examples posted above, I'm guessing to make the image less sterile (to cover up the fact that it's CGI). The funny thing is indeed that an experienced photographer would avoid both.
p.5 #19 · "Professional" Photographers , sold artwork hanging in buildings and Nikon D800E
Bifurcator wrote:
Photographers are always thinking about cleaning up images.
CG artists are always thinking about how to dirty up images.
Tariq Gibran wrote:
Ha, that's what I thought!
Yup.
But that soft reflection I think you're referring to in that other image is just a massive blunder.
PS: has anyone noticed that FM thread pages are now 20 posts long instead of 25? I was hoping they would increase to 50 or 100. Instead they decreased... What a bummer! This is going to make discussions very hard to follow and image threads all the more uninteresting!
It has it's place in landscape photography too. 
! See... told ya. Those are RENDERED in 3DMax 2011 and Vray 1.5. 