Journal
Two white days
Photographing a concrete house in fresh snow for Lumen Press, and learning to expose for white.
( Published )
( Category )
Architecture
( Reading time )
4 min read
Lumen Press asked for one building, for a book about quiet architecture. The house sits on a slope, and the snow arrived the night before we did. For two days the whole landscape was the same white as the sky.
That makes the concrete look like it is floating, and it makes cameras very confused.
Snow fools the meter
A light meter wants everything to average out to grey. Point it at snow and it underexposes, turning white into a dull blue-grey. I metered on the concrete instead and opened up a stop and a third, until the snow was bright but still held its surface.
We waited for overcast light. Direct sun would have drawn hard shadows under the overhang and broken the calm.
Less building, more space
The strongest frames show only part of the house, with a lot of empty white around it. Architecture books love a complete facade. This building made more sense as a fragment: a heavy line hanging in the silence.
— Nora Steinmann, Zürich
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