Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Architectural photography is possibly one of the most challenging types of photography there is. We see buildings every day of our lives, and most of them have been seen from just about every angle already. Seeing and photographing them in a new or interesting way isn’t easy.
This video from 30×40 Design Workshop was actually posted to YouTube a couple of years ago, but it’s not one I’d seen before and it offers some great advice for those wishing to pursue architecture photography.
Every now and then I am contacted by my friends at East Dunbartonshire Leisure and Culture. I help them to document events or artwork installations as part of the Trails + Tales Project. This particular art installation by Toby Paterson, where he placed stained glass windows into the watchtower of Cadder Church, has its own set of unique challenges for me to overcome which I would like to talk about.
Architectural photography is something that many of us try at some point in our photographic lives. I certainly have, on a number of occasions, although the results have never really been that good.
No doubt I’ll give it another go the next time I find myself in some beautiful town or city. But this time, I’ll have a few words of architectural wisdom from the guys at COOPH. In this video, they offer up seven tips to help us improve our architectural photography efforts.
A tilt-shift lens is most likely not the first one you’ll buy after the kit lens. But, a specialized lens like this can be a great problem-solver in many situations, or add a new dose of creativity to your shots. In this video, Jon Lorentz of Canon USA gives you some tips on using tilt-shift lenses, so you’ll get some ideas about how they can improve your photographic work.
Architectural photography has never really appealed to me. Not shooting it, at least. I do enjoy looking at it occasionally and there’s some fantastic work out there. For me, an interior is basically just an environment for a portrait rather than the subject itself. But the principles that go into lighting the room are the same regardless of your reason for shooting in it.
This video continues Jay P Morgan’s Laws of Light series. We’ve already seen how to light the outside of a cube. Now we learn how to light the inside of one, to illustrate how we can light a room interior. Light bouncing around inside a room often seems quite complicated. But it’s a lot easier to understand when it’s broken down into simple steps and principles.
Dallas-based photographer Nikola Olić travels the world and captures the buildings in a way that will make you stop, look and scratch your head. His architectural shots look like optical illusions, yet they were all created without digital manipulation. He chooses unique angles for his shots, combining them with carefully composed shadows and reflections. As a result, his photos will make the objects you’ve seen a hundred times look completely new and unique.
Spanish duo Daniel Rueda and Anna Devis are creatives, explorers, architecture lovers, and photographers. They travel the world and capture what they see in a creative and incredibly pleasing set of images. They shoot interesting architecture, but act as subjects in these photos too. This adds a unique perspective and creates a story that makes their photos even more appealing.
Their photos are pleasing tot he eye and somehow even soothing. When I first saw them, I couldn’t help but smile. Other than being wonderfully and carefully composed, they’re fun and spread the positive vibes.
Here’s a typical quick interior shoot for a Swiss brand called VIU Eyewear. They contacted me to create three images for their website/social networks. The only rule was to stay in the same style than their other images on their “Stores” page (something very simple, white and luminous with an emphasis on the store interior design). Here’s how I shot it and edited it.
Anybody who has visited one of the grandiose churches or cathedrals has come across this problem; how do you photograph the sheer size and magnificence of this holy architecture?
If you capture the chancel, you miss out on the ceiling murals. Try photographing the murals and you’ll probably be giving up on most of the stained glass.
One way to capture as much as possible would be a 360-degree panorama but that will result in a very distorted imaged with some of the most impressive features of the building – the ceiling, murals and unique lighting fixtures, left out of the frame.
Obviously such detail-filled gargantuan structures require an out-of-the-box solution, and this is where travel photographer Richard Silver (previously) and his vertical panoramas come into play.
Libraries are magical places and deserve to be treated this way. Way before we had all the human knowledge in the palm of our hands, that knowledge was located in huge buildings called libraries. As centers of data they were built to store massive amounts of book in an efficient way, as well as to allow the inquisitive mind access those books.
In an ongoing project, French photographer Franck Bohbot started photographing libraries in Rome and plans to expand to Europe, South America, Asia and North America. In his artist statement he shares that “This is about the places that we have learned and where the books stayed for decades. Paying tribute to the Architects. the light, the composition and the colors have to be coherent in all the series”
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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