Photographing Buildings Part 2
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Here is another building in Barcelona also by the architect Antoni
Gaudí, this one was nicknamed 'La Pedrera' by the locals
which means the quarry, they didn't like the building at first
and joked that it looked like the face of a quarry.
Night Photography
Photographing buildings at night raises new problems but can
produce great images. The first problem is that there is a lot
less light so holding the camera steady can be a problem. The
best way is to use a tripod but I couldn't fit one in my suitcase
so I had to find another way. One good way to give yourself extra
support is to lean against a tree or sturdy lamp post, bracing
yourself in this way and locking your arms tight into your body
can get you a reasonably sharp exposure at 1/15 sec or even down
to 1/4 sec. Another even better method is to brace the camera
against a signpost or sturdy support such as a wall. If you are
sitting at a cafe you can often get good shots by placing the
camera on the table. I was doing this a few days ago, using a
book under the lens to adjust the height and got sharp pictures
at very slow shutter speeds.
The other problem with night photography is the very high contrast
of the scene, this can send your automatic metering system into
a complete frenzy. If you have mastered the art of bracketing
exposures on your camera I would suggest that this is a good time
to use it. The idea of bracketing is that you take one exposure
at the 'correct' setting according to the light meter and then
you take one or more at higher or lower readings. Most of the
better cameras these days will have a special knob for doing this
so you don't have to resort to manual exposure. Just click the
wheel to +1, +2 or -1, -2 etc. The big question is which settings
to use and how finely tuned do your different exposures have to
be. A professional shooting in the studio will bracket his exposures
1/3 of a stop apart, but you or I looking at the results might
not be able to see the difference between one shot and another.
A whole stop on the other hand might be too much (if you're
confused about f stops have a look at the aperture
section).
| In a night scene you are inevitably going
to have quite a lot of black and there will usually be light
sources in the scene which will normally be burned out white,
at least in the centre, so the object of bracketing is to
control the highlights so they don't get too out of hand.
As you can see in the photo above there are halos around
the lights but they are, in my opinion, under control. There
are no rules about how big your halos should be, it's up
to you, but massive blobs of white in the picture can look
pretty ugly. Normally I would not recommend a highlight
near the edge of the picture as this can lead the eye out
of the frame, however I tried this photo with and without
the street lamp on the left and decided to leave it in.
Rules are there to be broken but it's nice to know you're
breaking them. |
|
Once again I've picked out a couple of details of the building
the picture on the left shows the colour of the stone in the early
morning sun. Above right I had to show a close up of these wonderfully
eccentric balconies. The bottom right photo shows the same facade
in daylight which, while still a stunning building, does not have
the punch of the photo I took at night. You can also see, if you
look carefully, that the verticals converge more in the daytime
photo even though the two shots were taken from almost the same
spot. This is because I have doctored the night photo in Photoshop
as described on page
1.
The delights of this building go on and on and, luckily for me,
visitors are allowed on the roof where there is a collection of
very weird and wonderful objects as you'll discover on page
3 the final page of this article.
If you want to get serious about photographing buildings try
this book.
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