These days, it’s tough to find a photographer who doesn’t have a smartphone camera in hand. There are three main reasons why they hold such value in the modern age. First, they’re incredibly convenient. In-camera features like the timer, the grid overlay, the self-timer, and movie mode can be accessed with a deft touch of the screen, allowing you to shoot a short video or take a quick portrait no matter where you are. Under the right conditions, these features can also produce professional results. Second, smartphones are capable of capturing nearly any type of image you can imagine. Third, they’re relatively affordable. A smartphone camera can produce impressive results.
Every so often, we at Cameras & Videos head out to photograph a building (a Multiple Dwelling Unit, or MDU) in the evenings when it’s not as busy. This is a good way to develop your skills and learn more about taking photographs of buildings in different types of light and learning how to blend in with the environment. So, here are some tips on Learning How To Photograph Buildings.
- Shoot it in the different types of weather
When it comes to photography, it’s not just the weather that makes or breaks a picture. How you edit and manipulate your images is just as important. When working with a wide range of light and weather conditions, you need to be able to adjust your settings to get the results you want.
The vast majority of people are familiar with the sun rising and setting, but a lot of people don’t know about the sunrise and sunset of buildings. Of course, there are many places to shoot buildings at different times of day, but you have to realize that the size of a building can do a lot to change the mood of the shot. This means that you’re going to need to know how to change your perspective to match the mood of the building. The best way to do this is to shoot a series of images, but how do you do that when the lighting of a building is constantly changing? The answer is you take a few pictures of the building at different times of day and different weather conditions.
- Go for a good lighting
The word “lighting” can mean a lot of things in a different context. For example, it can be a room that is flooded by ambient light or a space that is lit by spotlights. It can also be a specific location within a skyscraper that is illuminated by spotlights or the light from the street. And it can also refer to the reflection of sunlight in a window or the softness of a shadow that is cast. Lighting an interior space is a crucial part of capturing it right. Lighting is an important component of a well-photographed interior. As a rule, when taking a picture of the living space, the main light should be located on the opposite side of the room as the window falls through. This will create the best shot of the space.
- Make use of a tripod
If you are not blessed with steady hands, then clicking sharp pictures, be it of buildings or humans, could be difficult for you. You may have the right perspective to tell a story through your image, but may not have the right tools to do so. This is when a Pocket Tripod can come in handy. Thanks to its carbon fiber leg and features like angle indicators and tilt adjustment options, you can set up your phone camera at the right height and angle. This enables you to frame the shot the way you visualized and click a photo with a clear focus on the subject and a minimal amount of blurriness.
- Find its unique angle
Buildings are often overlooked as subjects to photograph, but with a little practice and patience, we can take our cameras and capture them in a way that tells a story. The most important thing is to have fun because it’s a great feeling to be able to show something so complex as simply beautiful and engagingly. It’s a truism that great photography is about finding the angle that best tells the story. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up taking the same shot from every angle or the same spot. Great photography needs to be `seen’ in a different way, which, if you are photographing buildings, can be quite challenging.
We all have had that one memorable picture in our life that we are still talking about today, be it a landscape, a person, or a picture of a building. You take a picture, leave the spot, spend your next few days speaking of this picture. We all have that one picture that has been a highlight of our life. There are so many famous pictures that we know today, but there are still so many that are considered unreachable because of the cost involved in taking a picture. Buildings are hard to photograph. They are tall, hard to reach, and often located far from any light. This means you’re going to have to work harder to get a picture. That’s ok because after you’ve done all the hard work, you can sit back and let your camera do the work for you.
