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Photographing Elmar Tampõld’s original blueprints

January 15, 2022 by Kerly Ilves

I got a wonderful assignment of taking photos of Elmar Tampõld‘s many blueprints from the ’70s. They were drawn on tracing paper, drawing paper, film-like sheets and printed on special large format architect plastic/canvas sheets.

Elmar Tampõld was an Estonian-born Canadian architect. He got his education at the University of Toronto and become a very successful architect. You can admire two of his biggest creations on Bloor Street West, between Spadina and St. George: Tartu College and Rochdale College. Will share photos of both of these buildings later this year.

The coolest part of taking photos of these blueprints was when I got to see the film-like sheets. They had most of the times tracing paper drawings taped on. I was thinking about how to take photos of these to show their best qualities. So I decided to tape them on the window. It was a nice sunny day and the backlight really gave a good kick and made these drawings alive. I took some of the whole views, but the final files show the tracing paper drawing and the end look was really clean and sharp.

The moral of the story – try to look out of the box and make the best of what you have. Also do not forget the angle of shooting as well 😉

View of Tartu College. This photo was taken on the ground floor of the same building on Spadina Avenue.

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