Hedrich Blessing Photography

This week our Photography in Chicago Now class took a trip to the studio and offices of Hedrich Blessing Photography. The Chicago-based organization specialize in architectural photography and may just be the oldest photo studio in the world. Since starting in 1929, the studio has found what works best for them. We were lucky enough to hear a few of these tips during our afternoon spent touring the facility. The studio has five photographers that were mentored by another photographer at Hedrich Blessing, but even with five pairs of eyes behind the cameras they try to keep similar goals with the photos. A lot of the Hedrich Blessing photos make the conscious choice to elevate the look of the building and not having people in the photo because people tend to look at people first and they want the focus to be the architecture. Another interesting business practice of the Hedrich Blessing studio is that they don't use any contracts. Therefore, none of the clients that they shoot for are obligated to pay for the work they shoot unless they actually use the photographs. I thought this was strange at first, but, after thinking about it, it makes sense because it motivates the photographer to do their best work and capture what the client wants in the first shoot. This not only cuts costs, but also makes the Hedrich Blessing studio look very impressive. A third business ideology that Hedrich Blessing believes in is that they always aspire to keep the studio young. I heard about an example of this during our visit to the actual in-house studio. As we walked into the the huge warehouse-looking space, I quickly noticed what looked like small tire tracks over the white sheetrock and floor. The explanation, of course, was that someone at Hedrich Blessing had bought a control-operated toy car and had used the sloped space of the studio to test how far up the wall they could get the car. This, in addition to the more technical fact that the company went completely digital 4 years ago, shows the personality of the company and the joy that they bring to work.

There was a quote from the movie we watched last week called Visual Acoustics: The Modernish of Julius Schulman that made the point that the majority of people never see the iconic pieces of architecture that are constructed, so the role of the architectural photographer is imperative. Although Hedrich Blessing is a photography studio, they believe that architecture is the only necessary art. So it makes sense that the photographs the create with architecture as their subject is stunning and timeless. Below are a collection of a few photographs that have been taken by the Hedrich Blessing photographers over the years.