Table Rock House Restaurant

Table Rock House Restaurant, Niagara Falls, Ontario, by +VG Architects, and interior design firm Johnson Chou Design. David Lasker Photography provided these images to +VG Architects and Johnson Chou Design as part of the media kit that David Lasker Communications creates for clients in the architecture and design community. “It’s all about the light” may be the five most-uttered words in photography, but at Table Rock House Restaurant in Niagara Falls, Ont., by +VG Architects and Johnson Chou Design, our challenge, as a restaurant photographer in Toronto, was all about the lighting. To capture in a single exposure the iconic, sunlit Falls outside and the much darker, yet evenly lit interior vista, with no hotspots or unnatural shadows, demonstrates technical mastery. Our goal in this assignment, as ever when we photograph commercial spaces, was to communicate not just the literal look of the interior architecture and its environment, but to convey the spirit of the place—the emotion and poetry—of one of the best views in the world. To that end, we found the perfect camera angle to catch the symmetrical image of the Bomma Soap pendant lamps hanging from, and reflected in, the stretched, mirrorized ceiling material, which raises the apparent height of the ceiling while letting patrons catch sight of the Falls in their peripheral vision no matter which direction they’re looking. What makes the shot memorable rather than gimmicky is the background: Look closely at the top of the photo and you’ll see the throngs of sightseers gazing at the Falls. And note the unsteady, quivery look of the blue water and green trees. That’s the visual expression of the power of the rushing Niagara River, which keeps the building subtly, but constantly, vibrating.