Jack McDonald Hall

6 Tips To Improve Your Architectural Photography

 
Architectural photography is a genre that almost every photographer tries out at some point, but not many people truly manage to master it. Just like portraiture or landscape photography, architectural photography has its own tips and tricks that we should learn and apply.

Buildings are like people in a way – each has its own mood and personality. Good architectural photography is looking to capture the most enchanting qualities of various buildings and their interiors and exteriors.

In case you’re willing to combine your creativity with the following 6 tips, you can definitely improve the visual appeal of your architectural photographs.

1. Get Familiar With The Place You’re Shooting
In order to understand the visual essence of a certain building, you need to take some time to get familiar with it. This means you should learn what the building looks like on the inside and outside under various lighting conditions. You can also look for unusual angles and unusual perspectives and notice if there are any people around that you’d want to include in your shots.

If you’re interested in history, you can find out more about the building from a chronological point of view. Sometimes, knowing the history of a certain place can help you unlock your creativity.

2. Follow The Lines
Lines are extremely important in architectural shots. You should make sure that your lines go where they’re supposed to – vertical lines should be vertical and horizontal lines should be perfectly horizontal. Even though this sounds simple it can be very challenging, because sometimes you’ll need to tilt the camera to get the entire building in the frame.

There are other issues you’ll have to deal with too, such as barrel distortion. If you’re using a wide-angle lens, you’ll surely have a certain amount of distortion in your images. For fixing lens distortion and other issues with vertical and horizontal lines you’ll have to rely on post-processing.

3. Show A Unique Perspective
Finding a unique perspective matters because you want to avoid predictable images. Shooting the building from a regular eye-level perspective often doesn’t have enough visua allure. You should learn to be a careful observer and take the time to look around in ways you might not have as a regular passer by.

Read More: 6 Tips To Improve Your Architectural Photography