Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Architecture is an art form, it is a branch of science, it is a business, it is the architect’s personal expression as well as that of the commissioner. So, it is not surprising that I see architectural photography as overlapping various forms, kinds, branches of photography.
This post will help me crystallize my ideas of architectural photography as I get ready for another round-table discussion at the Film Photographers Association.
I’ve never been a fan of brutalism, probably because I’ve grown up in a country that has lots of buildings from this era. I’ve never found brutalist architecture particularly photogenic either. But then, I saw photos taken by Xiao Yang and they changed my mind.
This Chinese photographer has traveled the world searching for abandoned places to photograph. Her journeys have brought her to the Balkans, where you’ll find lots of massive concrete monuments, mostly built in the 1960s and 1970s. Using long exposures and light painting, Xiao has managed to turn these abandoned monuments into magnificent giants you’ll want to visit right now.
An architectural photo series of the Goetheanum building in Dornach, Switzerland.
The Goetheanum is the world center for the anthroposophical movement. The building was designed by Rudolf Steiner and named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It includes two performance halls with 1500 seats, a gallery and lecture spaces, a library, a bookstore, and administrative spaces for the Anthroposophical Society.
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.
Sometimes, we see something that we want to make a photograph of. But we don’t just want to grab a quick snap and go on our merry way. We instantly have a vision in our heads. We know how we want that final image to look. But we can’t. We don’t have our gear with us, or it’s the wrong type of weather or time of year. Whatever.
That’s how photographer Nick Carver felt when he stumbled across this liquor store while visiting his future in-laws in Santa Barbara. Instantly he fell in love with it and knew he had to photograph it. He’s been waiting a long time to do it, but he finally has, and he documented his process of shooting it on super wide 6×17 medium format film.
We may live in an era where high-resolution digital cameras are kings, but as photographer Steve O’Nions shows in this video, sometimes all it takes a simple camera to add some magic to an image.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube.
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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