Architecture Photography Article
Architectural photography or building photography is a unique type of photography which requires special skills. Just imagine a huge building or architectural masterpiece and think of taking its picture. What comes to mind? The first question arises is from which angle to take the photograph. What distance would be appropriate? What will be the color setup and light requirement? These and many more questions come to mind when one decides to capture architectural creations and huge and tall building.
The first thing to do towards solving this problem is to have a vantage point. This depends on type of building or the type of architecture to be photographed. The vantage point or angle will be different if the building is multistoried and it will again differ if it is a villa or a bungalow. The next thing to remember is light. The light required for building photography depends on the type of building as well as the purpose of the photograph. Customer may demand photograph of a particular building in the evening, so light has to be adjusted according to it. Some buildings have bright colors and some are dull and here also light needs to be adjusted accordingly. Next to be taken care is exposure. Mostly for architectural photography "f/8" is useful but it should be accompanied by shutter speed. One requires patience and dedication for this technical detail to fructify.
The major problems architectural photographer face is image distortion. Image distortion is a deviation from rectilinear projection, a projection in which straight lines in a scene remain straight in an image. It is a form of optical aberration. This refers to a phenomenon where in the image taken by the photographer is distorted due to the angle or the point from where the photographer has been taken. Software has been created to correct these distortions by remapping the image with a reverse distortion calculated or measured for multiple lenses and stored in a database, for example PhotoShop.
Next, to get a good architectural photograph, one must choose correct hardware. Hand held camera using high ISO setting is one option, but it is advisable to start with lowest ISO like 100 as large depth of field is required for architectural photography. The photographer has the choice of looking at any part of the building and finding adequate sharp focus. The best choice of hardware to carry is tripod which most architectural photographer carries.
View camera is also an option for building photography as it has the advantage of to distort the shape of the image by skewing the film plane, most often to reduce or eliminate, or deliberately exaggerate, convergence of lines which are parallel in the building.
All said and done, it can be said that architectural photography requires unique sets of skills and requires highly qualified and professional architectural photographer to bring in the required results. A good architectural photograph can be obtained with right selection of hardware and correct use of the technicalities of the said hardware.
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