Shooting buildings
One of the mainstays of any amateur photographer is photographing buildings. Whether you are on holiday and want to remember the Spanish architecture and colonial porticos on that charming little Church you visited, or you visit a place with unusual architecture that strikes you as particularly visually appealing, almost any lens on almost any camera can produce memorable shots, if you remember a few tips.
Any photography course worth its salt will teach you how to compose and frame a shot, and how to master light and control the finer settings on your camera, and some, (like the Diploma in Photography offered by https://www.institute-of-photography.com) will actually cover holiday and travel photography, so it really is worth considering taking an online photography course. The small outlay will be more than repaid when you have an album of beautifully composed shots of your favourite buildings and architectural features.
Why are my shots not straight?
Before starting, you should be aware of the limitations of your lens and camera. A lens is a curved piece of glass, or optical refraction equipment, and it bends the light entering the camera, yet buildings (hopefully) are very straight. This can lead to disappointment when you get your photos printed only to find that the building you photographed is distorted, leaning backwards, or appearing to be too wide at the top. There are a few things you can do to avoid this distortion.
Firstly you could invest in a tilt shift adapter or tilt shift lens. Assuming you have a few hundred (or even a few thousand) pounds to spend on your hobby, this is one way of avoiding leaning or out-of-perspective buildings in your photography. Tilt-Shift is a technology which allows lenses to manipulate the perspective of the shot they are framing, by moving the plane of focus (the area which remains sharp in your image) sideways, or up or down, depending on whether you tilt, or shift, the lens.
Assuming you are an amateur and just want good photographs of buildings, and that you don’t want to spend more than you need to, you have to perform this trick of perspective by other (cheaper) means.
Just stand back
The easiest way to photograph buildings without distortion is to stand back, as far away from the building as you can, while still keeping it in focus. If you are using DSLR, you can be sure your camera will capture sufficient detail to allow cropping later, so you can zoom and crop until the building is brought forward, straight and tall.
Let Photoshop do the work
If you cannot stand back far enough to get the detail you want, maybe you will have to settle for the fact that distortion is going to occur, and worry about fixing it later on your computer. Thankfully, Adobe Photoshop has a collection of tools to allow you to do just this. You can download a free trial of Adobe Photoshop Elements, and use the Correct Camera Distortion filter to straighten out those leaning buildings and misshapen lines.
Use the vertical perspective sliders to make the building stand straight. Or, if you have the full version of Adobe Photoshop, look for the lens correction filter, and simply move the vertical or horizontal correction sliders until your building straightens up. Crop the finished image to remove the overlap left when perspective correction has taken place and you’re done!
So, I can straighten my distorted shots. What else should I know?
Apart from the basic skill of making your buildings appear straight and upright, there are a few tips to composing a photograph of a building that are worth bearing in mind.
Don’t always try to photograph the whole building – sometimes a particularly dramatic architectural feature, such as a gargoyle, a carving or a spire might be the area to focus your camera on. Symmetry in a building, (or asymmetry) might be the thing that catches your eye, so don’t be afraid to zoom in and capture just an element of the whole.
Some buildings just have very interesting lines which lead the eye toward a certain point. You should try to vary your shots, so that your photographs tell the story of the building in its detail as well as in its context.
If you are photographing outdoors, in good light, there really isn’t a favoured setting which will guarantee success every time, but a little experimentation can pay real dividends. Try using the automatic settings on your DSLR to take a few shots, and then, since what you see on the screen of a DSLR is just what you will see on the prints, change a few settings and take the same shots with a higher ISO.
Remember that ISO is a measure of how sensitive to light your camera is, and that the cost of a higher ISO is more noise. Perhaps, for artistic effect, you want a grainier image, to establish a moody feel to your shots, and you can see how easy it is to use experimentation to change the story you tell.
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