Chapter 8 notes: Architecture and Urban Landscapes

• indirect portraits: when you take pictures of the buildings and homes in your neighbothoods, otwns, and cities
• pictures of buildings and cities in modern societies can also give us clues about our own lives
• it is a great way to examine the formal aspects of design
• people created the buildings that make up our cities and towns
• they used the elements of art and principles of design
• architectural photography can be formal or informal
• LOOKING BACK
• Charles Negre began to use photography to create studies for his paintings
• Frederick H. Evans
• one of the greatest architectural photographers in the history of the medium
• Eugene Atget
• self taught photographer in the late 1890's
• THINKING ARTISTICALLY
• can be a casual "sketch" of a place, or and exploration of abstract details
• you use the line to lead the viewer's eye through an architectural image
• observe the sapce that surrounds the objects or buildings in your photographs
• a building's visual relationship to things around it can also reveal a great deal about its "personality"
• pattern: the repetition of any elements of art
• CAMERA SETTINGS
• selecting a smaller f-stop gives a greater depth of field
• use a bigger camera format for the most detailed images
• bigger the negative, the more detail it will capture
• FILM
• architectural photographs can either be black and white or color
• color emphasizes color and setting
• black and white emphasizes values, shapes, and textures
• can be divided into two types: commercial and artistic
• commercial: magazines and brochures
• usually shot in color
• artistic: black and white is usually the medium of chouse
• LIGHTING
• very important in interior architectural photography
• inside buildings many different kinds of lighting are used
• film can't adjust to these differences in color
• LENSES
• wide angle lenses are very useful for doing the "big view"
• the wider the lense, the more distortion you get
• CAMERA SUPPORT
• when walking around taking snapshots of buildings, you can get away without a tripod
• if you like slow fine grained film, better off using a tripod because you will be using a much slower shutter speed
• monopods might work for walking around and shooting details
• will not work for interior photographs
• you will find yourself using very slow shutter speeds
• FILTERS
• when doing big views, you frequently include the sky
• using a yellow or orange filter will separate the clouds from the sky in a black and white photograph
• THE BIG VIEW
• the wide angle, overall view
• it shows the whole building
• has a few drawbacks
• perspective distorion:  appears as strong converging lines in a building
• the farther you are from a building, the less distortion you will see
• photographer must also decide whether to shoot the picture straight on from the front of from slightly to the side
• SHADOWS
• make an interesting subject all by themselves
• instead of photographing actual objects, capture the shadows that they cast
• pay attention to the lines, shapes and values
• THE DETAIL SHOT
• features the individual architectural elements of a building's interior or exterior
• these details become indirect portraits of the craftspeople who made them. 
• INTERIOR VIEWS
• you can record overall shots of whole rooms
• or can focus on smaller details
• if room is small, won't be able to back up enough to get the entire room into the frame
• when taking detail pictures, you need to think about depth of field and the f-stop on your lens
• will be reasonably close to your subject
• closer you are the subject, more depth of field you need



detail architecture



disneland, wide view "big view" architecture photography