 Photographing
Buildings
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The Right Light
If you prefer to go on sightseeing holidays rather than flopping
on a beach then you're probably going to want to take photos of
the buildings you visit. The trouble is you're always there at
the wrong time of day, the light is coming from the wrong direction,
there are crowds of people blocking your view and the rest of
the family are nagging you to put the camera away and get moving.
You could just buy the postcard but, if you are a photography
junkie like me, that will never be an option. Although sometimes
I might buy a postcard as an insurance policy in case my photos
are not good enough.
The best time of day to take photos of any outdoor subject is
either the early morning or the evening when the sunlight has
a reddish hue and the light is coming from the side rather than
directly overhead. Early morning is best, there is a difference
in the quality of light that I find it hard to put my finger on,
also there are normally less people around. Obviously if you are
photographing buildings the best time of day is going to be dictated
by which way the building is facing. The photo on the right was
taken at about 7.30am, I had spotted the building the day before
but the light was all wrong so, as it was close to the hotel where
I was staying I decided to go back in the morning.
As with any other type of photography you should ask yourself
what it is about this particular building that you like and focus
on that. Sometimes this will mean framing the whole building,
sometimes it will mean picking out details and sometimes a mixture
of both will work well. In the photo above it was the tower on
top of the building that caught my eye but I found that I needed
at least some of the building to give the tower context.
Framing
When photographing buildings, especially the tops, you
often end up with lots of boring sky so a good trick is
to frame the top of the building with a branch or two from
a nearby tree. I was quite lucky with this shot the trees
were there waiting for me, all I had to do was go and stand
in the right place, but I would not be above dropping in
a branch from another photo using a bit of Photoshop magic.
Looking around for a tree before you take the photo though
will always be more convincing and with zoom lenses it is
easy enough to adjust your perspective to fit everything
into the right place. It can be hard to get the scale and
the lighting just right when you try to put the tree in
afterwards. |
|
 Getting
the perspective right
All the photos on this page were taken on a holiday trip to Barcelona
where, amongst other delights, we wanted to see the work of the
architect Antoni Gaudí. The photo on the left is of a building
that was reworked by him in the 1920s. This building is quite
difficult to photograph because the trees that line the roadside
get in the way. I wanted a shot of the whole facade and the only
way I was going to get it, without chopping the tree down, was
a drastic tilt of the camera. In this instance the look is quite
dramatic and the use of a wide angle lens makes the building look
as though it is bending over backwards. Whenever you tilt the
lens upwards to get the top of the building into the picture you
will notice that the sides of the building converge towards the
top and the building appears to be leaning over backwards. In
a shot like this one it doesn't really matter but, if you want
your buildings to be upright, and personally I hate to see photos
of buildings where the verticals are slightly off, then you either
have to shoot from a higher vantage point or you need to employ
a little trickery.
In the bad old days of film the best option was a special 'anamorphic'
or shift lens which would correct the verticals for you. There
was also an option to correct the perspective in the darkroom
by tilting the enlarger at an angle but in the modern world we
use the 'perspective' or 'distort' adjustment in Photoshop to
spread out the top of the picture until the verticals are once
again vertical.
If you have ever tried to do this to one of your photos and found
the adjustment greyed out as unavailable, the probable reason
is that you are trying to apply the adjustment to the background
layer which will not work. If you double click on the layer in
the 'layers' palette you get the option to rename the layer and
the default option is 'layer 0' click yes to this and the layer
will no longer be the background and all the perspective adjustments
will work.
Here are three more photos of the same building, in the shot
on the right I have corrected the verticals in Photoshop by stretching
out the top of the picture. This seems to work remarkably well
considering the programme must have to insert pixels into your
picture to make up the size. I suppose a purist would not stretch
the top but shrink the bottom and then crop the sides.
Normally when I am out and about I carry two zoom lenses, a mid-range
which covers approximately 28-80mm (in old fashioned 35mm
terms, now 18-55mm) and a 75-300mm telephoto. This covers
me from moderate wide angle to about as much telephoto as it is
sensible to handle without a tripod. The two pictures on the left
are details from the facade showing the'bits that I like' picked
out with the telephoto lens.
If you want to get serious about photographing buildings try
this book.
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