COOPERTHWAITE PRODUCTIONS

Photographer | Director | DP

Technical Data
Camera: My cameras have changed considerably over the years—from 35mm film to increasingly sophisticated digital medium format systems using tilt-shift lenses—but the essential process hasn't changed. Look first. Photograph second.
Experience: More than two decades photographing architecture, interiors, landscapes and the built environment.
I’ve always been interested in the technical side of photography, but equipment has never been the reason for making a photograph. The camera is a tool for translating what I see into something that can be felt by someone who wasn't there.
I began with black and white film, photographing buildings and architectural models while studying architecture. Since then digital photography and Photoshop evolved and gradually changed the way I worked, giving me greater freedom to refine an image.

Location Details
London — 2002
Cooperthwaite Photography begins.
London was where I first started working professionally as an architectural photographer, photographing the built environment that had fascinated me since my teens.
My first published photograph was of the National Theatre in London.
Its Brutalist architecture had always caught my attention—the raw concrete, monumental forms and strong geometry. The photograph was published, and seeing my work in print for the first time was significant. It was a small milestone, but one that stayed with me.
Porto. The turning point.
I was there as a postgraduate architecture student studying the work of Álvaro Siza. I had my first digital camera with me, as I usually did, and found myself becoming more interested in photographing the architecture than studying it as an architect.
There was something about Siza's buildings—the restraint, the materiality, the relationship between the building and its surroundings—that made me look more intently.
I returned from Porto knowing I wanted to become a photographer.
Wherever the work takes me
Wherever the client needs me
Over the years, l have photographed Class A commercial buildings, high-end residences and interiors in a multitude of cities across the nation.

Environmental Observations
I have always been interested in what happens around architecture as much as the architecture itself.
Light changes a building continuously. A façade that seems ordinary in the middle of the day can become completely different early in the morning or late in the afternoon.
Weather changes the character of a place.
People change its scale.
Cars, trees, shadows, reflections, signs, movement and the traces of everyday life all become part of the image.

Creative Thoughts
I think I was always more interested in looking than designing.
From around the age of eight, I wanted to be an architect. I followed that path through architecture school at South Bank University and Kingston University.
But I kept choosing photography courses.
I kept bringing a camera with me.
After Porto, I left architecture school with one academic year remaining on my Masters of Architecture and began photographing professionally.
Cooperthwaite Photography started in London in 2002 and evolved into Cooperthwaite Productions in 2008 as film and motion became an increasingly important part of the work.
More than twenty years later, I'm still chasing the same things.
Light.
Form.
Material.
Space.
Scale.
People.