Blog #109 Architectural Photography
Blog #109 Architectural Photography
Architecture includes any structure made by a person. Buildings are beautiful! Architecture is like photography in that it is a seamless mix of art and science. In this week’s blog post, I will share a few tips that you might want to consider when making pictures of architecture. Remember CAM/O! The same guidelines apply to architectural shots as to all others. The subject should be pretty obvious [save abstract images], highlight he subject through framing and composition techniques, and minimisation or elimination of distractions are critical.
Get High & Wide
Use a wide angle lens like a 35mm, 28mm, 24mm, or ultra wide angle such as 21mm or wider. The wide angle will be helpful to get relatively close while fitting the whole structure into your frame. Architecture has its challenges such as perspective distortion. When you look up at a tall building, the sides seems to converge at the top. Due to the optical limitations of structure of our eyes this is natural, like looking down a long road. Distortion is a nature phenomenon and is not necessarily a bag thing. However, there are many circumstances where you might want to minimise or eliminate distortion in your images such as when when shooting interiors.
Another inherent challenge in capturing images of buildings is the ship’s peak or crowning effect that your lens will apply to a corner of a building that might be near the camera when pointed upwards. Wide angle lenses are terrific except for the distortion that wide angle lenses apply. The area in the centre patch of the frame will look disproportionally closer to the camera. When this effect is combined with perspective distortion such a shooting up at the corner of a building, your lens will tend to make the corner of the building look like the bow of a ship.
If you want your lines to be straight when shooting structures [this applies to interior and exterior], you have two choices.
- You can use a tilt shift lens which is made into two parts and you can adjust the lens plane in relation to the film [sensor] plane to correct the perspective distortion.
- The second way to correct this is to simply get high. I’m not suggesting that smoking marijuana will make your images look better but I’m saying that it won’t. Get the camera up higher. If you are on the 10th floor of a building shooting a 20 story building across the street, for example, you can get all of the [vertical] lines very straight right in the camera. For 1-2 story structures such as a house, stand on a ladder, tree stump, or another small object. Raising the camera even a meter or two will correct a significant amount of perspective distortion and keep your vertical lines straight up and down. Simple!
Get Inside
Interiors are a type of architectural image that can be fun and useful to shoot as well. Use a tripod to get the camera around six feet high to keep the lines straight. Light the room appropriately and evenly to accent or emphasise areas of interest in the scene. Remember to tidy up and eliminate distractions.
Get Close
Architecture frequently contains many interesting albeit small details. Patterns, ornate carvings, details, or textures may make for interesting architectural photographs. Use framing devices like shooting through windows or arches to add interest to your images. You might occasionally include people to represent scale as a useful tool.
So there you have it! Three tips for making the most out of architectural images. Get high and wide, get inside, or get close. Finally, you’ll notice that most of the images in this post are black and white. Buildings might not have particularly interesting colours so the black and white image aids the viewer in focusing on the line, shape, or pattern. Black and white works well in architectural images.
Try to tell a story through your images such as the intently dense apartment living in Hong Kong that is fairly unique to the rest of the world. If you want to use a drone, that’s all fine and good but the “rules” of good composition and general image making apply to all genres within the craft such as macro, aerial, architectural, etc…
The light is always right.
jhg
*Images: © Jeremy H. Greenberg
Where: Hong Kong, Viet Nam, Shenzhen, Central Japan, Taipei, Seoul, Province Town, USA, Nice, France.
Subject: Architecture and Building Structures
Gear: Fujifilm X-Series Mirrorless Digital Cameras (X-T1, X-T2, X-E3) and 24mm, 28mm or 35mm lenses, 35mm film cameras, iPhone, and whatever else I happen to be wearing that day.
Casual Photophile Tip & Techniques No. 001 The Subject is the Subject
The Inspired Eye Photography Magazine Issue #40 (full interview)
Hong Kong Free Press: HKFP Lens
Blog #18 Criticizing Photographs or Beyond the “like”
Blog #25 Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark[room].
Blog #47 Composition, Composition, and More Composition
Blog #65 Summer is for Travel (Hanoi)
Blog #67 Risks, Rules, & Restrictions
Blog #68 Photography is a Gift
Blog #72 Living the Creative Life
Blog #90 Restrictions, Revisited
Blog #93 Photographic Technique
Blog #105 Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign
Blog #108 Photography Quotes Part 3
Blog #108 Photography Quotes Part 3
In this week’s blog I will post a small collection of quotations from life and photography that I have collected since the last post of this type “Photography Quotes Part 2”. This will be the third in this particular series of photography related quotations as food for thought. Part 1 was in Blog #31 and Part 2 was in Blog #70 if you’re just catching up with my blog posts. Without further adieu, here it goes:
I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today's existence.
Robert Mapplethorpe
If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. Robert Mapplethorpe
Anybody can be a great photographer if they zoom in enough on what they love.
David Bailey
A Camera can serve as a passport to other lives and cultures but it also paradoxically stands between the photographer and the world. We’re not participating, we’re observing, We’re trying to be inconspicuous; we’re trying to be not there, but there.
So it’s a pretty lonely life.
Wayne Miller
Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything. Aaron Siskind
Style is very personal. It has nothing to do with fashion. Fashion is over quickly. Style is forever.
Ralph Lauren
Focus on what you can control.
Being smart is cooler than anything in the world.
Choose people who lift you up.
Find people who will make you better.
Remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you.
Success doesn't count unless you earn it fair and square.
Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.
The one thing people can't take away from you is your education.
There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.
When you're not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch.
Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.
Michele Obama
Black and White are the colours of photography. To me they symbolise the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.
Robert Frank
A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart, and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it; it is in a word, effective.
Irving Penn
Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas.
It’s a creative art.
Ansel Adams
Regard no practice as immutable. Change and be ready to change again. Accept no eternal verity. Experiment.
B.F. Skinner
Color is to the eye what music is to the ear.
Louis Comfort Tiffany
Behavior is a difficult subject matter, not because it is inaccessible, but because it is extremely complex. Since it is a process, rather than a thing, it cannot be easily be held still for observation. It is changing, fluid, evanescent, and for this reason it makes great technical demands upon the ingenuity and energy of the scientist.
B.F. Skinner
The most important thing is to tell a personal story. The most important aspect of any photographer’s work is their connection to the subject. If that connection is a wholesome, positive, exciting one, then work is going to inevitably speak to an audience. So that’s what documentary offers: an incredible opportunity to engage with an audience, to engage with the subject, and for that sense of commitment and excitement to shine through.
Martin Parr
The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation.
Susan Meiselas
The light is always right.
jhg
*Images: © Jeremy H. Greenberg
Where: Ap Lei Chau Hong Kong
Subject: The Harbour School Photo Club @THS_PHOTO_CLUB
Gear: Leica Minlux + Agfa Vista Plus 400 35mm Colour Film
Casual Photophile Tip & Techniques No. 001 The Subject is the Subject
The Inspired Eye Photography Magazine Issue #40 (full interview)
Hong Kong Free Press: HKFP Lens
Blog #18 Criticizing Photographs or Beyond the “like”
Blog #25 Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark[room].
Blog #47 Composition, Composition, and More Composition
Blog #65 Summer is for Travel (Hanoi)
Blog #67 Risks, Rules, & Restrictions
Blog #68 Photography is a Gift
Blog #72 Living the Creative Life
Blog #90 Restrictions, Revisited
Blog #93 Photographic Technique
Blog #105 Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign
Blog #107 TAX!
Blog #107 TAX!
Hong Kong is the best city in the world to get around in. Public transportation is excellent. Massive double-decker busses, mini-busses, ferries to the outer islands and across Victoria Harbour, the immaculate and efficient MTR, and of course taxis are inexpensive, fast, safe, frequent, and relatively clean.
Given that there are 7 million people or more who live in this tiny territory, and only 5% own private cars, the transportation system needs to be spot on and it is! In the last eight years that I’ve lived here, the only time that I really miss having a car is on a Friday morning, in the pouring rain, when there are there are no taxis and I’m trying to get to work. Do you feel my pain? I know, I know, first world problems, I get it.
So the taxi is like your private car in Hong Kong. Red ones travel around Hong Kong Island and Kowloon side, green are in the New Territories far north and blue are on Lantau Island only where the airport is.
Hong Kong uses Toyota Crown Comfort models almost exclusively. It’s a late 1980s semi-boxy no-frills sedan type design. Frankly, I’m convinced that Toyota copied the VW Jetta Mark II (1984-1992) . Anyway the red body and silver topped four-door sedan (saloon) is an icon. It’s impossible not to take photos of Hong Kong taxis. The red colour shows up great on color film as well.
In this week’s blog post, I offer a selection of Hong Kong Taxi images for your visual enjoyment. It’s an Ode To The Taxi that we all know and love, and take for granted. Vroom Vroom…
The light is always right.
jhg
*Images: © Jeremy H. Greenberg
Where: Hong Kong
Subject: Hong Kong Red Taxi Series
Gear: Mostly Fujifilm X-Series Mirrorless Digital Cameras and 28mm, 35mm, or 50mm lenses
Casual Photophile Tip & Techniques No. 001 The Subject is the Subject
The Inspired Eye Photography Magazine Issue #40 (full interview)
Hong Kong Free Press: HKFP Lens
Blog #18 Criticizing Photographs or Beyond the “like”
Blog #25 Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark[room].
Blog #47 Composition, Composition, and More Composition
Blog #65 Summer is for Travel (Hanoi)
Blog #67 Risks, Rules, & Restrictions
Blog #68 Photography is a Gift
Blog #72 Living the Creative Life
Blog #90 Restrictions, Revisited
Blog #93 Photographic Technique
Blog #105 Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign
Blog #106 The Shadow Side
Blog #106 The Shadow Side
In my last blog post, I confessed my obsession with series. These are mere collections of images that have the same subject but otherwise vary in all other ways. They may not be tied to a colour, place, style, medium, or anything else for that matter. Film, digital, it doesn’t matter. I just like making pictures of signs as I illustrated in my last post Blog #105.
There is a method to my madness, as they say. These simple assignments force creativity and a fresh POV. To keep myself interested I make images of the same subject but never in the same way. I vary something, anything, everything, but keep the subject constant. That’s my simple method. It sounds easy but its not so easy in practice.
Shadows are one of my series that I will share a bit here. I love the sharp and high contrast that is characteristic of shadows. Shadows can be of anything such as a tree, a person, a car, a building, or whatever. You just need a strong enough light source and the proper angle to make a shadow. Making images of shadows is a study in line and shape. It’s really a means to an end, rather than a project or end unto itself. Some artists are successful sharing their series as a series or stand-alone work. That can work for some and more power to them.
If you are starting to make series at this point in your photography I suggest having no more than 10. You will inevitably lose interest in a few of these over time and the result will be a core set of about five or so series that you will continue over the course of a year or longer. When you tire of one, file it, and replace it. You might dig up an old series, dust it off, and take a stroll down memory lane or even add an image or two from time to time.
Think of series as your artist sketch book. Who knows maybe some great body of work will emerge someday. All great journeys start with one step said the great Chinese philosopher Lao Zi. Begin yours today!
The light is always right.
jhg
*Images: © Jeremy H. Greenberg
Where: Hong Kong
Subject: Shadow Series
Gear: A variety of light-proof boxes. Let’s face it, who gives a shit?
Casual Photophile Tip & Techniques No. 001 The Subject is the Subject
The Inspired Eye Photography Magazine Issue #40 (full interview)
Hong Kong Free Press: HKFP Lens
Blog #18 Criticizing Photographs or Beyond the “like”
Blog #25 Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark[room].
Blog #47 Composition, Composition, and More Composition
Blog #65 Summer is for Travel (Hanoi)
Blog #67 Risks, Rules, & Restrictions
Blog #68 Photography is a Gift
Blog #72 Living the Creative Life
Blog #90 Restrictions, Revisited
Blog #93 Photographic Technique
Blog #105 Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign
Blog #105 Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign
Blog #105 Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign
“Signs, signs, everywhere a sign…”
went the the song by Canadian group The Five Man Electrical Band in 1971. This song was written in the same year as my birth. Now, before you go doing the math, remember that age is just a number #tongueface.
Urban environments fascinate me. Cities are never just finished. There is constant growth, decay, re-growth, and the cycle repeats. Urban environments are constantly bristling with activity like a human sized bee hive of commotion. This is what makes cities so awesome to make pictures in. There is literally never a dull moment. Dull moments are not dull at all. The absence of activity can be as or more striking than activity in a cityscape due to its rarity.
Signs of all shapes and colours surround us. Walking down the street is like living inside of a kindergarten child’s colouring book. Many of these are brightly coloured to simultaneously grab the attention of drivers and warn them of what's ahead. Form follows function in a simple but elegant construction that functions as communication.
I am a bit of a hoarder, photographically speaking. I collect images that I place in series. These are studies on a theme or subject that I enjoy collecting and collating from time to time. I have about a dozen of these. Birds, shadows, signs, architecture, taxis, and other common objects that you find in and around cities are the subject of my series. Trying to vary the images while staying with one subject can become an exercise in creativity. I will present some of these sets in subsequent blogs.
Here, I will share some images of ordinary road signs. You know the great old master William Eggleston? Well, he had one of the first and most significant photography shows in colour at the MOMA. This dude lived in a pretty simple and boring place called Memphis, Tennessee. However, through Eggleston’s lens, Memphis was anything but boring. He made simple and gorgeous images focusing on common objects, using line, form, and colour in a truly masterful way. He was so influential that is could be said that he launched colour film into the mainstream art community who, prior to his show, mostly rejected colour altogether.
I’m no Eggleston, but I do enjoy the challenge of finding shapes and colours to work with in a cityscape environment. Street signs offer themselves as a great subject in which to work with. Construction sites are especially dense and rich with signs and colours. Geometry shapes and color, what's not to love! It's like living inside of a box of Lucky Charms Cereal.
If you’ve been shooting for a while, you might find that you gravitate towards dogs, or buildings, or reflections, or whatever. Work these subjects and work them long and hard. You might find a new angle, perspective, or point of view [POV] after a while. Work the scene, or work the series. Either way, something wonderful just might be in that next frame.
The light is always right.
jhg
*Images: © Jeremy H. Greenberg
Where: Hong Kong
Subject: Signs Series, Streets of Hong Kong
Gear: Nikon F100 SLR, Minolta CLE + Leica 28mm lens, Kodak Ektar 100 35mm Color Film, Kodak Portra 400 35mm Color Film, Cinestill 800T 35mm Color Film
Casual Photophile Tip & Techniques No. 001 The Subject is the Subject
The Inspired Eye Photography Magazine Issue #40 (full interview)
Hong Kong Free Press: HKFP Lens
Blog #18 Criticizing Photographs or Beyond the “like”
Blog #25 Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark[room].
Blog #47 Composition, Composition, and More Composition
Blog #65 Summer is for Travel (Hanoi)
Blog #67 Risks, Rules, & Restrictions
Blog #68 Photography is a Gift
Blog #72 Living the Creative Life
Blog #90 Restrictions, Revisited
Blog #93 Photographic Technique