30 Architecture Photography: Capturing Beauty in Buildings

I have always enjoy admiring buildings, be it popular landmarks from a certain country, historic heritage buildings such as a castle or a temple or new a creative buildings designed in a way that makes one admired its architecture. Buildings have been a wonderful subject to photography; however it is not something one can always get it right in the first time. It is one thing to capture beautiful buildings but it is another issue to capture them in such ways that do justice to their architecture and beauty.

Architecture photography is seen as a challenging and rewarding genre in photography. It is not easy to capture good architecture photography in ways that will flatter the designed and ambience to a certain structure, it requires experience, techniques and sometimes-even timing and the right kind of equipments.

While challenging, many people held the misconception that architecture photography refers to exterior photos of a building. In fact, architecture photography actually encompasses not just buildings, but includes other man-made structures; monuments, bridges and even a simple lamppost could be considered a subject in this genre.

Some to the factors to take note off while exploring this genre is the lighting of the subject; photographers will need to be aware of the lighting source while photographing their subjects. For example, they should make full use of the natural lighting and the landscape surrounding the building when they are taking external shots of the building; or they should also take note of the internal lighting, such as light sources through windows or the ambient lighting when taking interior shots. Framing the subjects could be done in close-up shots to capture delicate and intricate designed details or they could frame the subjects in an angle to depict the symmetry of the architecture to reinforce the subjects. In fact the geometry designs to the subject should be made full use in order to put emphasis on the vertical lines and the balance in the picture.

Some advices that architecture photographers to those who are interested in this genre is to do some research on the subject that one will be visiting or photographing. This is because understanding the history or the design concept of a building can help you pick the best angles and timing to photograph the subject. The other important tip is to pick the timing to photograph a particular subject, some of the buildings or architecture looks best in its natural environment and lighting, where as capturing them at night gives off a whole different impression; in fact the weather will also give of a different impression to a building. Taking a picture of a castle during fine weather will make it look incredible, but a picture of the same castle taken during a stormy weather enhances its mysterious aura.

Here we have gathered the works of different architecture photographers who managed to capture these buildings in different ways and manners. We hope the tips and the images here will be able to inspire you in this very genre.