Transcripts
1. 1.Intro: I'm a freelance architecture photographer on you. My No, I'm ketchup in the world to capture the beauty of our in this course, I will get you through the basics all how to take photos off buildings and captured the incidence. All architect, I'm super excited to share with you. What I've learned throughout the years on got you through my process, my workflow, what they do from the beginning. How it find locations I'm gonna share with you, which are my sources, to find the best modern and contemporary architectures all over the world. What they do not to forget what they are. And then we'll talk about composition because I think this is the most important aspect on architectural photography. We head out and I will show you how to capture the same building using symmetry and leading lines. We'll be back in studio and you will see how is my anything, Phil. I mean, he added my photos in black room and then I worked with photo shop for some minor reattaching before force is designed for anybody who's interested in design and architecture and wants to capture them using any kind of photography to baby. So you haven't got a camera yet. You can just follow along anyways. On start practicing, you can learn about what to look for if you're planning to buy a camera on. In the meantime, just stop practicing and get that with composition. Your phone is totally fine to begin with. So busy. Let's get started on I can't wait to see your I can't control shots as well.
2. 2.Project Assignment: now regarding the project assignment. Just head out. Find a building that you like and try to capture it from a symmetrical point of view first , and then take a walk around, explore it and find new angles. Try Teoh. Use leading lines to capture it in a different way in order to tell a story you know so way have the symmetrical short and then an angle. One. A little 10.1 look out down looking every direction and trying to use other architectural features to He needs your shot even more they look on, have a story with it. I can't wait to see you.
3. 3.My Sources To Find Locations: in this part of the course I will show you, which are my sources to find many modern and contemporary buildings. I mean, you can find anything online, but you know that I prefer modern architect. Okay, so first thing first, let's jump on Google Maps. Let's pretend we want to go and vz Basel in Switzerland. So what it would do is searching on our day. So let's go are. And I would just search for so and because we have so many results and we see lots of interesting buildings and so we pick the cruise. Me is human, Okay? And we put it on Google. We look for it, we find should be this one or this one, cause me is you and we save it. Start. So we're gonna remember where these is. We see what's interesting. We see what we want to check out what we want. Toe potentially photograph in our doing. Our trip? Well, this is a house. So is no gonna we never find it any kind of residential building. It's pretty hard to find. You're gonna get the doctor dress, usually check on these and as well, they're pretty similar, but never know we can find something you something that hasn't been covert by our dating for any reason. So season is more. It's focused more on the latest latest information that you can find a buyer architecture. So it's a big difference. Another source said. That I always use is world architecture map. It's pretty straightforward. As you can see, you can select buildings depending on Ah well, the name of the building itself for architects, location styles and so on. This is really useful because you can see exactly on the map where places are, and once a click, you find all the informations that you need. So mainly you want to know the location, and then you have some photos for reference so that you can see if you're really interested in photographing the building. Another source is the resultant. This is an Italian website in which you can find again other buildings, or maybe the same as well there you previously found. But it's another website that I always like to check out, just to see if there's something that I'm me steam my previous research. Another website that I often shock is Atlas Obscura. This is really nice because it gives you informations about unusual places that you can find in certain cities. It can be really good, especially if you want to photograph brutally structures. Uh, you can find them for sure. On a Febreze of school. Last tape is to look for local architectural firms. In this case, one of the biggest firms in Basel is there's again a more on um so I just go to their website and see what they have. Uh, when they have built in Basel, sometimes you can find some He didn gens.
4. 4.Composition Tips: As we all know, one of the best things about architectural photography is that is available to everyone, even if you live in a small place that you can always find several types of buildings or structures that can be interesting subject for your images. In this lesson, I want to show you some concepts about composition and perspective and their importance in this kind of photography. Photographing architecture often times take a lot of patients on when your side you often need to wait for elements to move. I have people people in front of your facade, or you need to wait for cars or any kind of vehicle tow by. Sometimes you will find your seen dirty. So if you find some trash cans on the floor, Dave, just whatever kind of trash you find. Just try to remove it from your scene onside rather than it shall be. Now let's see some symmetry to give a sense of balance to your photos. We all know that artificial structures are usually full of lines and different geometrical shapes that are just there ready to be captured, and if you take a symmetrical short, this will always look well violence very pleasing to the eye. That's why symmetrical images are often times the Bolden shots like that with classics wands that everybody is able to see and everybody captures because it is just they're very obvious. It will always look good, even though sometimes they may look a bit too static, too perfect. That's why I was recommended to take your symmetrical soft and then move the camera. Be like moving to the bottom part off the frame, followed leading line. Move the camera around and try to find this and angles and perspectives. So what did they command you to do when taking a magical is still ticking? Time on, Find what the actual axis of symmetry is. You can get help by the floor tiles. Maybe your bison fines, then never Your camera trick they use. And that I really recommend you doing every time you take architectural shots is toe. Turn on the screen greed on your camera. So then you will always get, you know, the vertical and the result of lines very straight. That's fundamental architecture. Photography lines are everything, and vertical lines have to be perfectly vertical, so horizontal well, take a shop and held you don't need and he kind of tried. But for symmetrical shots, well, usually mean if you want to, you can always bring along a try, especially recommend taking tribe er. If you want to avoid having people, let's say you're shooting in a really busy area and want to take a magical shot. But you have lots of people passing by in front of you. So you can do is put your camera on the try for on Take a very long exposure. This will just raise. So now that you must the art of taking magical shots, let's break it down and let you lead in line talking about leading lines how they can massively help you to create interesting and dynamic photos. It is a natural tendency of the human eye toe look four and follow lines. So if we pay just a little bit of attention in the placement off lines and angles of the buildings and structures that we want to capture, we can hugely improved the composition of our photos. I tried to frame my image so that these lines star from an angle off. My frame usually is the bottom last off right, and I take it from there. In this case, I have two leading line. So the star from the bottom of the frame, or I can have just one when the starts from the left or the right side off the frame and usually goes towards the opposite side so that I created kind of a They are, you know, lying that leads from walk going to the opposite off the frame. And as you can see these Vedic Lee eight's a lot of dynamism and movement in the photo is not that boring is not that still started, and it really works well for architecture, especially for a futuristic buildings and really contemporary structures. Another tape is to include the surroundings into the frame if they are something to this story. So if you realize that the surrounding out something to the building, the put it in your composition as well. It is true, though, that sometimes the background my look messy, boring or probably that's why often times architectural photographers just try to get rid of it, and they focus on details or maybe just the facade of the building. However, other times the background out something to the story of this building we're capturing. That's why it's called Contact Stroll. Background. That's what is really is it. So it's just gives a bit of context to the building. We can understand where it is located. What's around that structure that we are photographing. But if you realize that the contacts that is not what you want to include in your story, then just focus on the details and capture some patterns off the facade you're shooting or different lines and geometry. Now try to include a human element to give a sense of size off the building you want to photograph. I usually like my architectural shots that include just the time human finger, and usually this is in form of a silhouette, so you can't really see any Beatle off the person. You just see a shape, a human shape, and this is great because it really gives a sense of scale off the off the building and want to photograph for the entire city. This could be you're gonna be tricky sometimes because we're really drone to give a lot of importance to humans. So thes person this bigger may become the main subject of the photo and then the building. Just pass to a second place, so you need to violence. These the sentiment really well. Thes is the part in which architectural photography gets a little bit slow were, Let's say, because unless you're photographing with a model that you can place whatever you want whenever you want. You just need to be patient and wait for someone to maybe passed by your building so that you can include that person in the shop. And sometimes you want someone's to see fake to be included in your shot. It can be a man or woman. Or maybe you want someone with a hat, someone with and, um, Brandel or a red dress. Because that element, it was something more about the image in the story that you want to capture. So these can be a bit tricky and may require you patient
5. 5.Making Selects: Okay, so I imported all my photos in, like room. As you can see, I've already edited some of them. Actually, I edited the ones that I want to use for social media or my portfolio over this lesson, for example, so you see them in red. What I usually do is just go through all my photos and put a red label only on the images that I want to add it, so that later on, I can just order them by label rather than shooting time. It's just quicker and easier to edit this way, so let's see why I chose an image rather than the other one. As you can see, I overshoot sometimes, and this is just to have more variety, depending on a slightly different point of views or depending on how people move within my frame. In this case, I prefer the guy to be maybe further like here is just too close. That's why I chose this image. As I previously told you, I like my human element to be small, to be more like a steel with. I want to see their faces or too many details about people. This is just too blown out. So and I don't particularly like it, and it doesn't say much regarding this guy. I added this one because the finger is entire and the previous one has a funny shape. And in the last one, if legs are just cut off, I just tried to edit it. But as you can see, a didn't put of red label on it because I'm not going to use it. So what? I do it sometimes that just edit images that I think they may work. But then, once I did them, I realised that I want I don't like them that much, so I just don't use them. Or sometimes I edit an image just to see how it would look like once it's edited, and then I'll take it from there and decide if I want to move forward and edited more or put it in photo shop if needed. Otherwise, if I think it's just not worth E, I leave it just like that and I'm not gonna use it so I won't put a red label. In this case. I'm not quite sure which images I want to edit more. I want to use so I may addict them in a bunch. So I ended the 1st 1 and then for the following. Once, I just supply the same settings and see which ones I like the most. And then there would be the ones that I'm gonna export here. We have an example of what I said in the previous lesson about composition. Should a different angle the same subject, but go down, go slightly left of slightly right and try to capture different angles off the same view.
6. 6. My Editing Flow In Lightroom: Okay, so I chose thes image and let's see how to transform this row image into unedited one. Using light room. Let's start with selected from the library and then we go on develop. Let me reset it back toe its original setting. So this is the raw image just straight out of the camera. Let's fix the white balance first. I always just put it as shot, and then I go down into the transform section because that's the first thing that I have to do. So I feel like if the images know perfectly, uh, or decently straight and up, I'm not able to edit. So this is my personal preference. I start from the bottom to the top, so I start fixing the or is own tal and vertical lines. Sometimes the auto function is pretty good. Other times I used the guided lines. As you can see, it's really easy, and actually, light room does a pretty good job. If it's no perfect, we can fix it later in infomercial, which is the tool that I prefer for straight and lines up because it's more accurate. Then I fix my chromatic aberration and distortion on Les corrections, and it's just a matter of a click. So as you can see, it's very easy. I do mean just to see if there's any chromatic aberration. Toe correct. Sometimes you see those purple or really blue lines. That's where you want to fix. You're going to less correction manual, and you just move this lighter and see how they must changes. I go up and fix Beatles. I like my images to be pretty sharp. Usually pull up the details just a little bit. No, too much. I usually keep this plea toning because I think it gives and more hungrily stick feel. So I really used the split toning. I then go up and color Correct. What I usually do is the saturating, the yellows and the warm colors what yellows in general? Because I like my white to be really white, so I just he raise any light reflection on white surfaces. In this case is no really necessary because, as you can see, there's no there's no white wolves of white structures, so it doesn't change anything, and then you go up in the main editing section. I fix the white balance. I like colder tones. So I always go more towards the bluish temperature and then adjust the teams to make it look more realistic. Depending on the image, I don't have a preset. So depending on the image, I adjust the exposure, contrast and all the other settings. What I usually do is making sure that my shadows are black. I don't like shadows. There are gray usage or very soft. I like the shadows to be dark. Lastly, I adjust a certain area off the image. If I don't want to change the entire look off my image, I use a graduated filter, usually on the bottom, because maybe I wanted to be darker so that there's more emphasis on the middle of the image. So this is wearing doing in this case, and then I want to have the top car lighter. So I use another graduated filter just to lighten up, deceiving part and basically that's it. I'm happy with this image so you can see the difference Here is the before and after when we're happy, we're ready toe export it and we jumped on for the shop for the final re touches
7. 7. Retouching In Photoshop: last step off. Our editing process consists in cleaning up the scene and maybe straight and some lines that if needed, these is what I just do in photo shop. I don't use it for editing, but just for retouching. So we open our image and photo shop and let's start cleaning everything up. What I used is the spot healing brush tool, and it's so easy to use. Basically, you select the tool, you go up and select how big you want it to be or small. Depending on the area that you need to clean up literally, you just quickly click and all the dirt is gone. This is a bit of a tedious process, so if you can, if you don't have much dirt around, just clean the scene up while you're there. As you can see, we have that line that is cut off now, and we cannot leave it like that. But let me finish cleaning something up and then I'll show you how to fix that off course. Don't forget to erase ah objects or any kind of element that you raised on the pavement. If you have its reflection, Okay, time to fix that line. There are many different ways off getting that line back. This is what I do. So I go and select the lasso tool and I create a new layer, and I slightly move it. So we have the entire line and I just need to fix. You know, there's a little bit off chromatic difference that it's noticeable, so I don't like it. I just use the same tools before. No, actually, I'm using the rubber with a lower flow. No one is gonna look at that line, so if it's not perfect, it's fine. So that's normal dirt. But there are scratches and some lines that we don't want to keep on the image. I just merge the two layers and that's it. I keep cleaning everything up so that the floor looks on my genius. It does take some time, but it's nothing hard, and you just need one photo shop tool. You don't need to be a photo. Weezer, too. Fix your images. Okay, so there's some broken glass. I just fix that. So then it's not a distraction, and I have a massive sign as well, which I don't like, because I think is very distracting. It's the for is probably the first thing that you see. As soon as you take a look at this image, let's quickly fix it off. It doesn't have to be perfect, because again, no one is gonna look there and check if every detail is looking good. So we just want to be raise it and have the same kind of texture and color of the background. Okay, now I want to use the clone stamp because I think it does a better job. So we don't just remove the dirt, but we remove even any element that is disturbing. That is distracting. And sometimes this can be even just a tiny reflections in the form off white dots or signs or anything lying's. And so we go back and forth in our image with mean and, um, out and try to, uh, keep it in check and see if there's something more than needs to be fixed. Okay, so here we can see the after and before. That's how it looked like. So this wasn't edited image, but no recast and why I do this in photo shop because it's quicker, easier and more accurate than in light room. Now let's see if we need to fix any line. We just pulled down the guides. Let's check your resulting lines. So this is pretty good. Let's check this one looking good. So this is what I do it. Just check that throughout the image. My horizontal and vertical lines are perfectly straight. So in this case is you can see light room has done a pretty good job. Everything is straight. Let's check the vertical A swell and we can see it from this facade. Everything is looking good. So in this case, I wouldn't really need to straight and lines up. But I show you anyway, is what it would do. Accident. Maybe we can fix the symmetrical arcs of what it would do is go on, edit, transform and the store. So now you see that you have several points on the image and you can drop these points and distort your image. So there we go. Let's try to fix it up. Always have the guiding lines on, and I want to have that line straight in the middle and symmetrical. So I just move my points around until I see that the image is perfectly straight and symmetrical. When I like it, I just heat enter and that's it with them. So our images now edited and re touched. I can export it as a Jeep exile and that sick it's ready.
8. 8. Recap: And that's it, guys. So you made it until the end. Now you know what to do to take beautiful photos of architectures. So now you can just have a side either in your city or what? Traveling. Find the buildings that you like. The malls. Then try to capture them from a magical point of view. Use leaving, lying as always. Don't forget to look down. Car left, right, looking every direction. Just start taking focus, baby. That's how you gonna prove focus on composition for soul. Some things are very easy, very easy. Don't forget about the assignment on post everything here because I really want to see your natural shops and I try to do my best to review them and give me my feet back. Leave a review about this lesson and just let me know what you liked or what it could prove on or what you want to learn more trying to make it happen.
Nancy Da Campo, Architecture Photographer
