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How to Photograph Architecture (Exterior)

by Philip Greenspun

Home : Learn : One Article

This is an example-based tutorial on photographing buildings.

Your pictures need not be pretty

Architectural photography at its best will convey the experience of being in and around a built environment. In the case of the Dachau Concentration Camp , this won't

result in comforting attractive images.

Below is a parking garage in Kyoto . The colors and industrial appearance of the structure are remarkable in the middle of a city known for its ancient temples and gardens.

The purpose of the image is to capture the feeling of walking by the structure, not to delight or decorate.

A supermarket exterior is a subject that will probably never make a wall-worthy image by itself. However, the image below (from the Hawaii flowers collection ) captures

the spirit of being in the parking lot at night:

Give old buildings some space

In general, the older the structure, the more environmental context is required.

Using your hands or your mind, crop the preceding images to include just the structures and see if they would still work. Also, compare them to a few modern buildings

where hardly any context is required:

(The Big Boy pictures are also a good example of coming back repeatedly to a building in order to capture it in different lights and weather.)

Farms are a good example of where the structures don't make any sense removed from their context:

Even a bit of space helps

If you're not capturing an entire village or farm, it still makes sense to think about the space around your subject. Even a little bit of context helps anchor the image. For

example, the image at right, from the sunset district of San Francisco , shows us a house clearly enough to serve as a real estate advertisement. The fragment of the house

to the left, however, isn't wasted space. It tells us how tightly packed the neighborhood is.

In the image below, the sidewalk, the fragment of street, the pedestrian, and the little open market to the left of the shop help establish the Guatemalan context:

Step back and use a telephoto lens

Back up from an work of architecture and use a telephoto lens to compress the perspective. This often brings out an interesting pattern.

The images below, from Provincetown, Cape Cod , show the increased abstraction of a telephoto perspective. The picture on the right was taken with a much longer lens

than the one on the left.

Include the Fence

A fence can be an important image element. In the left-hand photo below (from Gotland, Sweden ), the fence works with the trees to frame the barn. It helps that the fence

is not brightly lit and is a bit out of focus. The viewer's eye will therefore naturally be drawn to the main subject of the photo, i.e., the barn. In the right-hand photo, from

Cape Cod , the fence immediately clues a viewer into the exclusive nature of the beach club.

Straight on Till Morning

Sometimes a direct approach is all that you need:

Watch the Shadows

Before color, Hollywood directors and cinematographers worked carefully to cast interesting shadows into scenes. Here are some examples of images where shadows set

the mood.

Watch the weather

What's the best weather for photographing buildings? Consider the following photo, from Travels with Samantha :

The sunlight adds punch to the fire hydrant and makes urban life seem more appealing. However, if you were trying to show people details in the buildings, a high

overcast day would have been much better. For example, here is an image from Visby, Sweden :

The Drama of the Staircase

It would seem that staircases are inherently dramatic.

Lead the eye by leading the person

If your composition includes a visible footpath into the scene, it should naturally draw the viewer.

Natural Frames

It is a contrived and hackneyed idea, but it does work to use natural frames. If you're working without a tripod, you probably won't be able to stop down the aperture

enough to get everything into focus. But it is okay to have a soft frame and a sharp subject.

Private Courtyards

Public Squares

The left-hand image, from Rome , has a classical composition leading the eye into the center of the frame. But the overview image to its right conveys a truer feeling for

the Spanish Steps.

Michelangelo designed the Campidoglio (left) to be viewed from above. The photo at right is from Burano .

Here is a Soviet-built memorial to the Second World War in Berlin :

People

Include people in an architecture photo if they give unexpected information about how a building is being used.

Don't forget the sculpture

Swimming Pools

Occasionally, a swimming pool is a work of art by itself, as in the image at left (Hearst Castle, from the photo.net California guide ). But most of the time, a pool is best

used as an abstract element in a composition from above, as at right ( Israel ).

How to Photograph Architecture - Exteriors.pdf

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