Photography that focuses on buildings is known as architecture photography, sometimes known as building photography or structure photography. It can involve photographing the outside and inside of buildings, as well as cityscapes, bridges, and other buildings. Beautiful building photography is often taken by numerous photographers.
Some of them undertake it as a purely creative endeavor, while others turn it into a business by taking pictures for customers, including publications, advertising agencies, and architecture firms. If you have an interest in photographing architecture, you can start today. A smart place to start is making sure you have the correct equipment, regardless of whether you want to pursue a profession in the industry or are simply trying to extend your portfolio with some architecture photography.
This guide is ready to explain how to photograph architecture and what are the best structure photography tips for you. We will be clearing all the things about architecture and photography today in this guide.
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Two Photographic Styles of Architecture
Exterior and interior photographs of buildings fall into two categories.
Photography Of Interior Architecture
This is a reference to images of a building’s inside. Interiors are sometimes more difficult to photograph since the ambient light coming in from windows or skylights is frequently constrained and occasionally filtered, like in the case of the vibrant stained glass windows found in cathedrals. A flash or other extra equipment aids in getting realistic interior shots.
Photography Of Outside Architecture
This refers to images of a building’s exterior. Exteriors benefit from abundant natural light, which facilitates photography of them. Exteriors may also have radically diverse, melancholy, and dramatic effects depending on the vagaries of nature.
Equipment Required for Architectural Photography
In order to take a stunning shot, you must have the right tools. While you don’t have to purchase everything at once, arming yourself with some of the fundamentals will help you be in a better position to take images in a variety of styles, from a variety of perspectives, and with the ability to experiment with depth and tone. What you definitely need is:
A Camera
Today, almost any kind of camera may be used to take amazing pictures. Even smartphones occasionally provide surprising effects. A digital camera’s ability to change lenses and quickly adjust settings like exposure, ISO and shutter speed is one advantage it has over a smartphone, though. Don’t be discouraged by the notion that you must wait to practice your architecture photography until you have the greatest and most costly DSLR camera available.
Set of Lenses
When you attach your lens to your camera body, it instantly transforms into your eyes and has the most influence on how you wish to shoot images. While a fixed focal length prime lens will normally provide you with a crisper and less distorted result, zoom lenses will enable you to go closer to the building without having to reposition your body. One of the greatest alternatives for changing perspective is a tilt-shift (t/s) lens, and knowing how to use one for architectural photography will help you produce original pictures for your portfolio.
Tripod Stand
A tripod may be a valuable piece of equipment to have on hand; however, it’s not always necessary. It helps to keep your camera steady (ideal for those of us with shaking hands) and photograph from angles that might be challenging for you to get into.
Tips for Photographing Structures
Here are a few photography tips for architecture to help you turn your pictures into works of high art.
Do Your Research Before You Go
Whether a structure has been standing for millennia or barely a few weeks, it all has a narrative. Do some study about the building before you start snapping images of it. You may choose what to shoot by choosing what to focus on by being aware of some of these background facts. Try to get the history behind the formation of a structure or a building so that you can understand better things.
Make Use Of Natural Lighting
In every subcategory of photography, light is crucial. Light in architectural photography may add drama, hide details, or draw attractive lines. Finding the proper light is essential to getting the photo, whether you’re going for a melancholy silhouette, a long exposure at night, or an antique structure against a clear blue sky. The time of day greatly affects the lighting of a photograph; by knowing where the sun will be as you approach a structure, you can select the optimum sort of light for the image.
In low-light situations or when the sun is behind the structure, you’ll either get a silhouette or overexpose the sky. The building may be photographed with equal exposure and ambient light with the sun in the front or to the side. Of course, for this directed light to function, the sun must be lower in the sky, which necessitates going outside in the early morning or late at night rather than during the day.
Focus on the Structural Details
If you are passionate about reading the structures and capturing them, you could find tidbits that correspond to the story of your chosen architectural subject. There is still a lot to discover even if you haven’t done any study if the building’s history doesn’t really inspire you. Think about the roof’s design or the ceiling or floor’s construction materials. Look out for strange symbols or recurring design motifs. In order to portray the entire architecture, photography must also capture the details.
Add Additional Buildings Or Rooms
Try including other structures in the frame if they provide a pleasing contrast to your subject. When photographing interiors, consider capturing the subject from a nearby corridor or a room for a better perspective. Taking pictures of these particulars adds another level of intricacy and attentiveness to architecture photography.
Use a Variety of Conditions to Photograph
Your images might take on a whole different vibe depending on the time of day or year. Depending on the position of the sun in the sky or the clouds, and lighting conditions, you will have a different result, especially for external pictures. You may get images that are bright and airy or somber and dramatic by taking shots in a variety of lighting situations.
Get Different Perspectives
Stop shooting pictures the way everyone else takes pictures, which means stop taking pictures always from eye level. This is one of the simplest ways to distinguish your architecture photography from a snapshot. It matters from what height you capture an architectural shot. Gazing down on a building will highlight shapes, while looking up at a building can make that structure appear even more imposing. Taller heights can assist decrease distortion.
Examine all angles of the structure in addition to the angle from which you are taking the photo. Look around the entire structure and keep an eye out for anything that captures the spirit of the building generally, including unusual ceilings, interesting stairs, and anything that is up or down.
Include People in Your Frames
In photographs of buildings, people help to show scale. A mature man appears to be 10 times larger when compared to a massive building. Additionally, you may employ humans to make the architecture’s purpose clear, draw attention to specifics, or express emotion through body language. Children climbing the building or people sitting in peculiar positions nearby might also provide the scene with a whimsical vibe.
Capture Different Shapes
Both architects and skilled architectural photographers understand the significance of lines and curves. Keep an eye out for lines that drive the eye through the image, whether they are horizontal, diagonal, or vertical. To call emphasis on a particular structure, leading lines might be used. The diagonal produces a sense of movement, the horizontal a sense of peace, and the vertical a sense of power or progress, among other connections.
Pro Tip: Although curved lines are less common in architecture, they give buildings a more organic sense since they are more frequently found in nature than in man-made structures.
Use Polarizing Filters
A polarizing filter is a cheap item that has a considerably greater influence on your photos than it does on your bank account. Polarizers can readily regulate reflections off of windows or water in architecture because they manage reflected light. Polarizers will also aid in making the sky look bluer, even without the apparent, reflecting light effects. Just keep in mind to remove the polarizer when not necessary, especially inside or at night, as these filters will lessen the quantity of natural light entering your photographs.
Make Use Of A Tripod
Motion blur can start to be an issue with that smaller aperture. Detail is crucial in architecture photography; therefore, maintaining sharpness is important. Particularly when shooting at the end of the day or while capturing a building’s lights at night, using a tripod will assist in maintaining the image’s crispiness. To keep the building’s details sharp, choose a smaller aperture, such as f/8, or even a higher f-stop.
Pro Tip: For architectural photography, a wide-angle lens might be helpful, especially if you’re photographing rather big structures.
Capture From The Inside
Architectural photography of a building’s outside is sometimes the first thing that springs to mind, but an interior shot may be just as interesting. Try to capture what you can find interesting about a structure from the inside. Many of the same recommendations are valid for photographing interiors of public places or with permission. However, because inside photos use a combination of window light and overhead lighting, the available light is different.
Note: In interior architecture photography, windows can be kept from being exposed by using HDR or an off-camera light.
Photographing Architecture: Techniques and Tips
To get the most out of your architecture photos, use these suggestions.
Position Is Crucial
Setting up the camera perpendicular to a building’s vertical lines will provide the most striking images. Control the viewpoint and change the focus point to catch several parallel vertical lines to create a striking shot.
Try Different Camera Settings
Play with the shutter speed and aperture for the three pictures above to capture one that is darker than you’d want, one that is brighter, and one that appears acceptable but needs some adjustment because each situation is distinct. At this stage of the process, accuracy is not important because you will combine these three photos in post-processing to create a final, balanced image.
Be On The Lookout For Curves
Clean lines against a clear sky draw attention to a structure’s symmetry, but keep an eye out for curves or other dynamic features that give an otherwise static image a feeling of motion.
How to Get Rid of People In Architecture Photography?
There can always be someone strolling into your view if you try to photograph a well-known iconic structure. And it might be quite difficult to see the structure clearly if there are people around. However, there is a technique to accomplish it in editing that makes use of the fact that the structure won’t change.
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Start by snapping a number of pictures while keeping your tripod and camera still. You should be able to piece together a clear image of your topic as individuals move around the setting. Then you can overlay all of the images in Photoshop and remove the subjects from each layer to clearly see the layers underneath.
Understanding When to Use Photoshop
As with all forms of photography, post-production is crucial to producing photos of the highest caliber. So it is crucial for every architecture photographer to be knowledgeable about picture editing in Photoshop or other programs. Understanding when to utilize these photo-editing tools is also crucial. You can edit your images as much as you like if you intend to use abstract architecture photography as a creative endeavor.
But since documenting structures is a common application for structure photography, viewers will expect your pictures to be as accurate as possible.