Architecture photography. Why do you need to photograph architecture, and who has been most successful at it? Use long lenses

Telephoto lens allows you to slide over small parts covering the building. The dashboard will help highlight for the viewer elements that highlight the uniqueness of the building. Wide Angle lens makes it possible to capture the building in its entirety. Or even put it in context with environment, adding a sense of location to the frame. Super wide angle lens fishy eye(fish-eye) can be used to create a visual effect that adds dimension to a building. This lens adds some extra creativity to the overall image.

Templates

In conditions urban landscape All kinds of geometric patterns, leading lines, diagonals and various grids are widespread. All of these shapes can serve as attractive means for photographic composition. Thus, interest and tension in the frame increases. The best way to do this is use transfactor(zoom lens). In this case, shooting is carried out while filling the frame. And note that most buildings include symmetrical elements in their structure. They can be used to enhance a composition. Some architectural photographers run your hand at the level of the bridge of your nose to help yourself create a frame around symmetrical points.

Reflections

Sometimes they meet building, especially in modern areas of the city that are glazed from top to bottom. They can be used as fantastic reflective surfaces that offer a range of compositional techniques such as symmetry and patterns. Also, in addition to them, we use the reflective properties of puddles and various bodies of water, sunglasses and windows Vehicle, which reflect all the same buildings.

Contrast

The juxtaposition of color, structure, content and light can add tension to an architectural image. Try to compare an old building in relation to the ultra-modern one standing next to it construction site. Or a very bright colorful wall with a flat, monotonous surface. Or simply observe where the light hits to capture areas of light and shadow on the subject.

Light and shadow

Building permeated with areas with high degree contrast. They can deceive system exposure metering cameras. This problem is especially true if you want to capture both shadow and highlight detail in a building. To solve the problem, you need to take frames with different exposure values and then combine them using software HDR. Or, if your camera has the ability, experiment with the dynamic range of the scene (for example, on Nikon this feature is called Active D-Lighting). You should start with the lowest setting and work your way up, switching until you find a level of detail you're happy with.

Scale

You can convey the size of an object by including some attributes in the frame Everyday life, for example, a bench on the street, traffic lights, street lighting, cars, passers-by, trees, etc. On the other hand, consider avoiding background objects altogether to give viewers a sense of perspective and scale.

Perspective correction

Many photographs of architectural structures produce distorted lines, especially if you use a wide-angle lens at low focal length. And at the same time you take pictures while standing below on the ground. To straighten these lines, there are a number of programs or plugins that can eliminate distortion. But such distortions can also be used to benefit photography. They add a sense of drama and a sense of scale to the image.

Architecture from the inside

Along with photographing the facade, the photographer often has the opportunity to capture what the outer walls hide, i.e. interior. The main problem we face here is the lack of sufficient lighting. Moreover, in some places the use of flash is limited. To combat this, use a lens with a wide aperture and increase the ISO value. You can also fix the camera, select a slow shutter speed and use the self-timer to take a photo. Where flash is acceptable, try using a diffuser to soften the harsh light that comes from direct flash. Flash often distorts scene texture and color.

Silhouette photography

Here we act in the same way as when photographing people. To get a photo with a visually stimulating silhouette of a building, you need to place it in correct position. This means that the sun should be behind a structure blocking the main stream of light. Don't forget to turn off the flash.

Night photography of architecture

Photographing buildings at night allows you to create fantastic scenes. This provides enormous opportunities for creative self-expression. Interesting results are obtained by photography taken before complete darkness, at twilight, when the lights of the evening dawn are still visible in the sky. Appears additional range colors, which gracefully illuminates individual elements of buildings. Wait for the evening lights to turn on in the windows of the houses and the headlights of the cars to light up.

Vlast, together with Archcode Almaty, continues a series of educational lectures on architecture. Famous architectural photographer Yuri Palmin visited Almaty. At the request of Archcode Almaty and Vlasti, he met with photographers and subscribers of our site and gave a compressed course on architectural photography.

Video recording of the lecture:

Full transcript of the lecture:

I am happy to be here in your city and to be working on a large project dedicated to the architecture of Almaty, and specifically to the period of post-war Soviet modernism.

I am Yuri Palmin, an architectural photographer, I have been doing this for almost 30 years. It’s time to somehow change my occupation, I’ve been doing this too much already. In principle, this is the only thing I know how to do and therefore I will talk to you about it. I really hope that our meeting today can benefit us all. I'm thinking of organizing this evening like this: I'll make an introduction, which I'll try to make as short as possible. Please forgive me if it takes longer. In fact, this is a squeezed-out architectural photography course, which I teach only for three classes, and then I also take credit for it. Of course, today I will not torture you with either one or the other, I will try to make this introduction as short as possible, because I believe that this story - the history of history, is extremely important for the general understanding of what I do and what, I believe, can be done by a person who consciously photographs architecture today. The fact is that architectural photography, like architecture, is now going through difficult times. And photography in general.

Yuri Palmin - architectural photographer, teacher of the “Photography” program. Basic course" in British Higher School design. Collaborates with such popular and professional publications as AD Magazine, Vogue, World Architecture, RIBA Journal, Icon Magazine, Domus, Abitare, Speech, EXIT, Mark Magazine, Project Russia

We live in an age overflowing with images. Images rain down on us from everywhere, we drown in them, sometimes we wish there were a little less of them. If earlier there were special people - photographers, who delivered visual information to the consumer of this information, now there is no such division, photographers are everyone. And I don’t think that after some time it will be possible to talk about professional and non-professional photographers; the situation will change. But we can talk about people who are engaged in obtaining and delivering such visual information consciously as professionals. Maybe they should be called non-photographers. Here is a short introduction about how the history of photography is connected with the history of architecture, and how the profession arose in general. Then I will show a couple of my projects. My photographs will not be in the first part; they did not go down in the history of architectural photography.

Architectural photography begins at the same time photography begins. Or rather, when photography ceases to be such a fairground trick, a miracle, and becomes quite ordinary human activity. This happens in the middle of the 19th century.

Architecture is a very tasty subject for photography, especially for early photography. It's clear why. Firstly, because the architecture does not move and we can shoot with long shutter speeds, so we do not need to hold a person in a special vice, as when taking portraits, so that he does not move during a four-minute shutter speed. Secondly, and very importantly, architecture is an undoubted value. That is, when photographing an architectural monument, we convey visual information about an obviously valuable object, this is very important. In addition, at the same time, changes are also beginning to occur in the architectural profession due to the fact that engineering is penetrating into architecture, they are beginning to connect. We know that the middle of the 19th century is the era of technically new architecture, and it is also the era of the beginning of conscious urbanism, which, of course, is associated primarily with the changes that the mayor of Paris, Baron Haussmann, has been making in Paris since the early 40s XIX century and beyond. And then the Paris Geographical Society was founded in Paris, this is the first team of architectural photographers who work under the leadership of Edouard Baldus - in fact, the founder of the profession. These people work on behalf of the city authorities, they record a city that is going through the most serious changes that have ever happened to a city in a short time in the history of urban studies. These are not gradual, not natural changes, but changes, one might say, forced. Therefore, firstly, the city needs to be recorded. Secondly, it is necessary to compile a list of city objects that constitute its absolute value.

Looking at these photographs, we see that a specific list of instructions was developed for photographing architecture. Firstly, the architecture must be removed - if possible, the facades should be removed from the front. Sunlight should fall on the facades in such a way as to bring out the textures and architectural details of the facades as much as possible, that is, as a rule, it is light that falls at an angle of approximately 45 degrees, and all geometric distortions - this is the most important thing in architectural photography, ever her story. This is such a small technical detail that says a lot about our profession. As you can see, in these photos all the vertical parallels are parallel.

Usually, when we walk around with a phone or a camera with a wide-angle lens, when we look up, you know that the vertical parallel ones collapse, and we are already accustomed to this in fact. Moreover, by tilting the camera, we get an image that does not correspond to how we see. While when we look at architecture with our eyes, or rather not only with our eyes, but also with our brain, we constantly adjust the vertical perspective based on the data we receive from our vestibular apparatus. We know how much we have bowed our heads, and we know how much we need to correct this distortion. Such correction in technical photography is done very simply. A camera from the mid-19th century has independent lens and film boards, so we can move the lens parallel to the film, as if lowering the horizon and maintaining parallelism to the vertical. This is what shift lenses do now. Back then all lenses were shift. And this is also one of the instructions: this maximum frontality and light, maximally emphasizing the details.

The most interesting thing is that at the same time, the same Eduard Baldus was developing a technique that is now used in the digital process simply everywhere. This is a gluing. It is impossible to photograph such an interior with the lenses of that time; they were not wide enough. Therefore, the photograph is taken in fragments. Then these fragments - negatives are cut out, glued together, all this is natural, done by hand, all this is done on glass plates and then a composite image is printed from them.

This digital reception was invented then, in the middle of the 19th century.

I immediately jump to the descendants of Baldus and French photographers - Marcus Brunetti, this German photographer who is famous for taking 42 photographs in 9 years and his entire product of nine years of extremely intense creativity is 42 photographs of the facades of Europe. These are the photographs.

We see that they are somehow similar to what the French took, but if we take a closer look at them, we will see that in fact it is impossible to take such a photograph. Because the angles from which specific details of the facades are visible are actually taken from different points. Our eye wants to see this way. In fact, looking at this facade, we, our brain, sees something like this, but we will never be able to photograph it like that. Only using a very complex technique that Marcus Brunetti uses, namely, this facade, this photograph, consists of about one and a half thousand pieces, taken with a very long lens from different points of the city and then corrected and glued together. This is approximately what Baldus did, only many times more complicated.

Shooting each picture can actually take several years, because we know that we come to Paris, and there at the Notre Dame Cathedral one tower will definitely be restored, the same with the Cologne Cathedral. Accordingly, Brunetti returns to the same place; naturally, he has everything written down. He comes back, makes the appropriate takes and then stitches the fruit of this many years of work into pictures like this. What is also remarkable here is that such a facade was not even seen by the architects of the buildings, because, as a rule, the creation of the facade of a Gothic or Renaissance cathedral took several generations. The architect could draw it, but he could not see it, because he was dying by the time half of the work was completed. Another of the unconditional disciples of this technical school of architectural photography are my very favorite respected artists, both unfortunately now deceased, Brand and Hila Becher, the founders of the Düsseldorf school of photography.

All this was filmed in cloudy weather. In one weather, with one lens, they are famous for a series of objects that have actually entered the treasury of modern art. That is, they transferred the same technical photography to modern art and founded the school of art photography in Düsseldorf. Among their students are the very famous Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruf, Andreas Gursky, the author of the most expensive photograph in the world, “Rhine II” for $4.5 million, the price of which is actually part of the work, but this is more complicated, this is part of a separate lecture.

These photographers also used such sets of instructions to create series and approached the shooting process technically, for example, this is Struth’s famous “Streets” series; they photographed deserted streets after dawn in different parts of the globe. And all his streets are like this, they are deserted, they lack scale, which is very important. And there is no person in them, and I will talk about the presence of a person in architectural photography a little later. This is one of the most radical architectural photographs that exist in the world. This is a photograph of the warehouse of the Ricola confectionery factory in Switzerland.

Herzog et de Meuron is one of the most famous architectural bureaus. You probably saw one of their latest projects - Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. This is one of the largest and most expensive works of architecture in recent times.

The second figure opposite to Baldus, who, as we see, founded a lot of things, is Eugene Atget - an extremely important figure in the history of art and culture in general.

He is also from Paris, he worked only in Paris, he photographed only Paris, he is one of those whom Baudelaire called flâneurs at the end of the 19th century. It is clear that the concept of “flaneur” later, through Walter Benjamin and later, through the Situationists of the 60s, became one of the fundamental concepts of the new left urban culture. A flâneur is a man who can get lost in his own city. A flâneur is a person who walks through the city without knowing where, and who is not interested in the goal, but is interested in the movement itself. The flâneur is like an arrow, a measuring device that measures the city with itself, with its subtle nerves, with its subtle feelings.

Haussmann's reforms led to the formation of the Paris Geographical Society. Eugene Atget lives in Paris and hates Haussmann, he simply cannot tolerate... For him, these urban reforms are an intrusion into the fabric of the city, which he subtly feels, and to which he relates very personally, intimately.

Walter Benjamin says that Atget's photographs are photographs from a crime scene, where you sometimes see people appear. But these people are not a scale, and not living characters, but an organic part of the very connection of the city with which Atget is connected by his nerves. Unfortunately, according to information that has already been verified, Atget did not move around the city like the needles of a measuring device, but drew the city into squares and planned his walks. And, unfortunately, it must be admitted, the history of art has removed this romantic flair from him. Then we move chronologically.

Atget's followers are romantic photographers, photographers for whom a work of architecture is not some object that needs to be recorded, but a part of some kind of their inner world, which they record by photographing the outside world. Then the 20th century begins. Interesting events begin to occur, partly related to technical changes taking place in photography itself. Photography is becoming completely mass-produced. You don’t need any special skills or abilities to produce high-quality prints.

Albert Renger-Patch is one of the leaders and founders of the New Substance movement in Germany in the 20s. And his main contribution to architectural photography is that it is Renger-Patch who introduces the everyday into everyday life and into the discourse of architectural photography. That is, he photographs both architectural monuments and city views as monuments.

In this case, this embankment seems to have been photographed in the correct light, it was certainly photographed in compliance with all the canons of architectural photography, but we cannot say what was photographed here: the bell tower, or the facades of the houses, or the fences that are in the foreground, because that everything is here. It’s like an urban environment that is not divided into separate objects for him.

He goes even further and begins to photograph industrial objects, showing the beauty of industrial objects, which for him is equal to the beauty of architectural monuments. For him, for example, Gothic arches are as significant as, for example, photographs of nature.

At the end of the 20s, he published a book that he wanted to call simply “Things”, but at the insistence of the publisher the title was changed to “The World is Beautiful” and the meaning of the book, the project, was that all the things seen by the camera are very important - they become beautiful. Here's the thing. When we look at the world, in general, when we look at something, we think about what we see, we constantly run this visual information through a huge number of filters. We have already said that we correct, for example, the convergence of vertical parallels absolutely unconsciously. But in addition to such simple physiological filters, we also have cultural filters - everyone has their own. We know that, for example, a five-story building from the 60s is a less valuable object than a Gothic cathedral, not to mention a nine-story building from the 70s. What do people who took a camera in these same 20s in Germany tell us? They say that photographic technology does not have such filters. Yes, she is soulless, but at the same time she is deprived of this constant comparison with the standards and criteria that culture has brought to us. And this wonderful property of technology opens up the world to us in a new way. That is, to look at the world more honestly than we see with our eyes and brain.

And, of course, then we have the Bauhaus ( educational institution- approx. V) and one of the key figures new photo In the 20s and 30s, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who was one of the founders of the Bauhaus, held very important positions there, and was also a theorist of photography of new visuality. What's going on here? An angle appears in photography, the camera begins to tilt up and down, it begins to squint, create a slant, simply rotate around its axis in such a way that our verticals become diagonals.

She begins to do things that the photographer simply could not afford before or that were a mistake. The camera moved off the tripod and took this shot. Why was this possible? In fact, there are several explanations here. The first explanation: the new materiality revealed this very new sincerity of photographic technique.

And secondly: cameras appeared that worked with narrow film. And in fact, a revolution took place, which I believe is more serious in photographic technology than the appearance of numbers. Because people began to understand that each frame is not a photographic plate that needs to be developed separately, bought there, charged, and carried with you limited quantity These same sheets, because they are heavy, a video appeared with 36 frames, in principle you can shoot 10 of these videos. Fill yourself with a case and shoot for your own pleasure and experiment. And with that, the tripod fell away. The tripod falling off is like a monkey's tail falling off, and it has led to enormous changes in photographic aesthetics. These are, for example, radical downward angles. You can't just put a tripod with a big camera. Interestingly, the love for angles and the craze for this new aesthetic has suddenly begun to give way to much stricter and new rules that are emerging in architectural photography. Now I'm skipping a whole stage and moving on to the man who shaped modern architectural photography in the second half of the 20th century. This is Lucien Herve.

This is Le Corbusier's personal photographer. It is known that Le Corbusier is the only architect who never took photographs. Actually this is not true. A book of photographs by Le Corbusier has now been published. Le Corbusier filmed from about 1907 to 1915, and he filmed everything, after which he wrote that I was one of those fools who bought cheap camera Kodak spent a lot of money on film, and only after 5 years I realized that photography was a fruitless activity and completely unnecessary for an architect, and then I threw away that camera and picked up a pencil. But somehow Le Corbusier still needed to fix his architecture, and this is where this tandem was developed. the best photos Le Corbusier photographed by Lucien Hervé. What's great about these photos? Look, architecture ceases to be a monument, ceases to be an object that has top/bottom, right/left, which needs to be framed and completely placed in the frame.

The value of the fragment in this case is not the same value as the capital or any other architectural detail in the old photograph when the fragments were taken. Architecture here becomes like some sort of object that can be explored, just as the world can be explored with a camera. It ceases to be an integral discrete object, and here Le Corbusier and Herve understand each other very well, and here it is necessary to give a separate lecture for many hours, because it is very interesting topic. Nowadays they write dissertations about this. What is important is that it is in the photography of Lucien Hervé that something that architectural photographers now use all the time finally appears - photographers begin to use radically oblique light.

You see, here it is a concrete surface under a fur coat, you can cut yourself on it. This is due to the fact that the light passes through it obliquely. We see different textures of concrete and here these textures constitute the main subject of photography. This tactility that appears in photography, it didn’t exist before, because before photography was such a picture, here is a house somewhere, on some other continent, so we photographed it, moved it from America to Europe, showed it here and we seem to have a house, but we look at it. We have it somewhere in the future. Another of Baldus' rules was to shoot with as long a lens as possible, as far away as possible. That is, to make the most impersonal presentation of a work of architecture. The longer the lens, the closer the picture is to axonometry. There cannot be an axonometric picture in photography, because we will always have perspective distortions. But axonometry is such a view of God, it is a look of a completely detached observer. And here architecture begins to be presented to us as something absolutely tactile and tangible. And this is the great merit of Lucien Herve. Then begins the era of commercial architectural photography, which in America is associated primarily with the names of Erza Stoller and Julias Shulman.

Here is the Guggenheim Museum, all such iconic photographs of iconic buildings. Note that the car is in the foreground for a reason. It is not just parked here and cannot be removed, as often such situations haunt me here, it is placed here specifically because this white surface works with the shapes and curves of the Guggenheim.

And Julias Shulman, who becomes such a singer of post-war American modernism. Because there are political, social, economic changes in society, which change housing and land prices, people come from war, the demographic situation there changes. In short, this whole American home thing is changing. And such deliberately simple and minimalist European modernism, which was previously rejected by American society, is penetrating into America.

But photography is needed here in order to convey this new lifestyle and, in general, even somehow advertise it to people. Perhaps this is the most famous architectural photograph, this is an exemplary house, specially built for filming, actually above Mulholland Drive.

Shulman staged this photograph for a very long time with an assistant, he seated the girls. The point here is that for a person familiar with the culture of the American family home, this story is completely non-standard: girls hang above the city, in the night, in some kind of glass cube. We see that this unnatural situation is actually very beautiful. The city is separate, the house is separate. The lighting is not ideal by today's standards, but... Julius Shulman is the only architectural photographer about whom a full-length documentary was made called Visual Acoustics, with voiceover narration by Dustin Hoffman.

This is a very funny photograph of Shulman, which shows how advertising character, as far as we now see, this frame was done and staged, especially when it is in color. That's it, let's move on to our time. Perhaps one of the most serious classical photographers who currently exists and lives and works actively is Ellen Binet.

I am happy to know her, for me she is simply a living classic, a person who greatly influenced me, but, unfortunately, now Ellen is overcome by very strong pessimistic feelings, sensations and general views on what is happening now with architectural photography.

Hélène Binet is a close friend of the architects with whom she worked, this is very important. She was a very close friend of Zaha Hadid and that's why I think Hélène Binet's photographs of Zaha Hadid's work are much better than Zaha's architecture. She was and is very friendly with Peter Zumthor, I don’t think there is... there is parity here, let’s put it that way.

This is the photograph taken by everyone who finds themselves in the small chapel of Brother Claus by the architect Peter Zumthor near Cologne. Doesn't go there public transport. This is what it is special place, where you have to walk 6 kilometers from the nearest railway station, this is very important, part of such an architectural experience. And this is the photograph that everyone who goes there takes. Each person lifts the camera up and films this drop – the window. This chapel is designed in this way: Zumthor made formwork from dead wood found by his students in the surrounding forest, such a hut was built, then it was used as formwork for concrete, after which the trunks were set on fire and at a certain moment, when the concrete was just approaching, and the ashes mixed with the hardening concrete and formed an absolutely amazing, unique texture of the interior decoration. After which glass drops were also inserted there, which are like dew on this ashes. This is an amazingly subtle thing. Everyone takes such a photograph, this photograph can be shown on the screen, you can watch it on the Internet, but you will not see it. It is remarkable because it was shot on a large format and it looks only in print. Now I mostly work with digital and I understand perfectly well what I am losing by not working with film. Here Hélène Binet is one of the last true classical architectural photographers; she doesn’t even have a camera on her phone. It is very important for her that she does not have a digital device for recording information.

This photograph is the Columbus Museum, the Archbishopric Museum in Cologne, also by the architect Peter Zumthor, and this is a picture that you will never see with your eyes, because this is a reflection, these are glares on the ceiling, such a hair texture, glare from the sun reflecting from a puddle, which is on the street, behind this perforated wall. You will never see such a picture, because this is the result of a long exposure, again shooting on film. This is one of Zumthor's iconic photographs, one of his favorites.

Then comes an era of close connection between contemporary art and architectural photography. Hiroshi Sugimoto, the famous Japanese artist and photographer, shoots works of modern architecture with very low sharpness. Thus, he seems to imitate this state of relaxed attention. A state of being at the edge of one's field of vision, such a lateral view of important architecture. On the one hand, this is important, but on the other hand, it is not harsh.

Such sharpness, unfortunately, only happens on large-format film, and you also need to watch it not on a small screen, but in a book or, even better, at an exhibition. And of course, the most important commercial figure in our profession now is Ivan Baan.

This is a Dutch architectural photographer who recently sold his last apartment and lives only on planes and hotels and travels all over the world and shoots everything starry and expensive that comes along. I say it's like he's baptizing. Until he christened the building, it seemed as if it did not exist. But Baan arrived, who flies around the world like an angel, and the building began to exist. This is a very important figure.

This is his photograph of New York after Hurricane Sandy in November 2012, when half the city was without power. Baan first thought about taking a car, but it was impossible to rent a car in New York these days; it was easier to rent a helicopter, cheaper than renting a car. I just remember because at that time I was lying in Brooklyn with a terrible headache, and at that time a real photographer was flying in a helicopter and photographing architecture. He then held an auction and sold, I think, 20 copies for a lot of money, which went to the Sandy relief fund. Ivan Baan is an interesting character.

Because in fact, I already said that it became common to film architecture in the 80-90s without people at all. This is deserted, dry, like a thing in itself, beautiful, with some kind of inner beauty, architecture that has no scale, that you won’t understand what it really is - jewelry this or sculpture. This picture took over the entire architectural press in the 80s and dominated it until the mid-2000s. And in fact, Ivan Baan was one of those people who, taking all these lifeless wonderful pictures - he knows how to do it very well, quite recently, somewhere in the mid-2000s, created a real revolution. I began not just to photograph people in architecture, but I began to force people into architecture.

As I was told, when Ivan Baan comes to Herzog & de Meuron to film new architecture, all the young architects are rounded up, they have to bring suits with them, several shifts, he has a people assistant who checks the clothes, does the casting, and then these young architects pretend to be office workers to passersby on the set of Baan.

Yes, this is how Ivan Baan shoots without people, Fondation Louis Vuitton, this is a classic architectural photograph that does not need to be captioned. Basically, everyone shoots the same way now. You know there's a website called archdaily.com, the premier architecture media outlet, and you actually rarely see an interesting personality in architectural photography there. Basically, all the architecture there is also shot according to the canons.

But this is a project in Caracas. What it is?

In a nutshell: this is a gigantic office building with 40-odd floors that was unfinished. They began to build it during the rise of the Venezuelan economy, which was in the late 90s, then it was abandoned, and then the worst disaster began in Venezuela economic crisis and the building was taken over by homeless people. And this is a gigantic squat, which gradually formed its own economy, its own sociology. For example, they somehow transmitted electricity from the neighboring lighting match, but they did not have an elevator, but they had a ramp that went up to the 22nd floor and there were special in-house taxi elevators that carried people. Baan studied it from top to bottom, including some oddities, for example, the grandmother who was lifted to the 34th floor. She is paralyzed and everyone knows that grandma will never come down from the 34th floor, that she will live and die there. They have their own shops and cafes there. Then Ivan Baan films this series in 2012, receives his Golden Lion, he and the group... This is such a theoretical architectural research group, well, in general, close to the Almaty Archcode, working all over the world, they receive their Golden Lion, it becomes public knowledge, after which in 2014 this building becomes world famous, because Brody from the TV series is hiding there. Motherland." He gets there, it seems in the third season, the whole world learns about the building, after which the corrupt Venezuelan police find out about it, after which a terrible purge takes place using the army and everyone is kicked out of there. And that’s it, now this skeleton stands alone, behind barbed wire, and no one lives there and there is no life there. This is a strange story, in fact, the catalyst for this whole story was architectural photography.

I bring this to the point that now, at the present time, architectural photography is in an unclear place. On the one hand, it is made according to the orders of architects and is as close as possible to renderings - what does the architect want? The architect wants to show the public that the rendering he sold to the client can in fact be photographed, in fact exists as a fact. This is a custom photo. Historical architecture photography certainly remains in its niche. This is what I prefer to do for the most part now. But in reality there is no critical photography - neither as a school, nor as an aesthetics. And whether there is a place for a photographer, whether there is a place for aesthetics, whether there is a place for a new language, is unknown. Therefore, this is where we started and where we ended, only in a different way. This was my introduction, forgive me for some confusion, into the history of architectural photography.

Now I will show my project. This is the first work that I did not by order of architects, but partly by own initiative. This is a series from Chertanovo, 1999, which was made for the exhibition of a series of exhibitions curated by the architect, artist Yuri Avvakumov, one of the founders of the paper architecture movement of the 80s. It was a series of exhibitions called "24". There is still site 24. Photo, it has been preserved. By the way, Avvakumov and I did the design. This was Avvakumov’s idea, a series of twenty-four exhibitions that opened every second Thursday of every month. Each exhibition had 24 photographs, and they had to be by either a photographer who photographs architecture or an architect who photographs or an artist who also works with photography and architecture. And each of the invited authors was free to choose their own topic.

And just at that time I moved to Chertanovo, but not to Severnoye, this is an experimental area, an exemplary residential area, which was designed in the 70s in the workshop of Mikhail Posokin Sr. One of these quite important objects of post-war modernism for Moscow. It took a very long time and was built poorly, and it was built only in the early 80s. But all the same, some basic architectural ideas embedded in it are there. In particular, one of these ideas is that it looks very close to the English brutalism of the 60s. There ideas of the Smithsons in general are quite guilty even in this photograph. For example, the fact that artificial relief is being introduced into this area.

For example, this hill, under which construction waste is buried. But this is the favorite slide of local children. Duplex apartments, artists' studios upstairs; by the way, artist-architects still work there. In general, this is a district that was planned as an exemplary communist one; by that time it was clear that the communism promised by Khrushchev in the 80s would not happen, and each family would not be given a separate apartment either. And in general there are small problems with socialism. But the idea was that it was possible to build separate areas that would be exemplary, such as enclaves of a new way of life. In particular, in northern Chertanovo, a vacuum waste disposal system made by the Swedes still operates. In general, everything is serious there. But it was still more serious. For example, the halls on the first floors of all buildings are non-residential. According to the initial projects, which were developed by sociologists together with architects, there should have been refrigerators in the halls, in which one could leave a list of groceries to the concierge, the groceries would be purchased, and by the evening they would be in the refrigerator on the resident’s shelf. But in fact, all this was built quite poorly, the structure of separating the flow of traffic and people, close to what Le Corbusier and Siam advocated, this horizontal stratification, had already stopped working at the construction stage. That is, part of the traffic flow was allowed above ground instead of all underground, so now it is impossible to park there, it is impossible to bring anything to the entrance, everything is crowded with cars and there is no way to fight this, because the underground road communications are blocked. But I was amazed by what I finally saw in this architecture... if it previously represented to me everything that I didn’t like about this past life gray, Soviet, very wretched, and limited. And architecture for me was like a sign of that life. Then I began to travel around the world, began to look at what was happening in Europe in the 50s and 60s, and I suddenly began to understand that there is this connection and that it is necessary to talk about it. And it so happened that it was in the early 2000s that the architectural community and journalists first began to talk about post-war modernism, and this topic suddenly seemed to come into play.

Nikolai Malinin, my co-author on the book, attributes this to me. Actually this is not true. I found myself in right time in the right place and did the right thing. And so I made a series about the existence of this area, unadorned, but at the same time somewhat romanticized or something. Curator Avvakumov then wrote in the text for the exhibition that Brodsky said that if a neutron bomb is dropped on Leningrad, which destroys all living things, leaving all infrastructure behind, then St. Petersburg will remain. But Palmin proved that if a neutron bomb is dropped on Severnoye Chertanovo, then Severnoye Chertanovo will remain. This is what I wrote about such a heavenly Chertanovo, devoid of inhabitants, such a failed paradise. In fact, this work is extremely important to me. And it was this work that pushed me to what I am doing now here, what I am trying to do in Moscow with architecture, which seems to be deprived of public attention. I am very interested in the topic of consciously directing the flow of one’s attention, one’s vision, and not only one’s, but through oneself and other people, to what is deprived of this attention.

Architectural photography is a fairly common task for a professional photographer. It is a separate, rather specific genre of photography, the task of which is to reflect the beauty of buildings, structures and building structures. The main customers of architectural photography are: construction companies, real estate agencies, advertising companies.

In architectural photography two main concepts can be traced, sometimes complementing each other. In the first case, the purpose of the shooting is to document reality with maximum realism - accurately maintaining proportions, reference to the area, neighboring buildings. Such architectural photography is in demand by builders when drawing up a project passport, preparing reporting documents and tender applications to permitting and regulatory authorities, government agencies, for 3D rendering and subsequent modeling. Lighting in this case is not as important as the photographer’s competent choice of shooting point and angle.

The second, more common case of ordering architectural photography is called “make me beautiful.” When the goal of a photo shoot is to obtain the most “advertising” photographs, everything is important - the shooting point, the angle, the absence of details that distract the observer’s attention, the intensity and nature of the illumination of the building facades, color temperature, moderate perspective distortions, the photographer’s ability to optimally fit the structure into the frame. Solving such problems is very rarely within the power of an amateur photographer. Artistic expressiveness of photographs, correct rendering of proportions and colors, respect for the laws of perspective is not an easy but interesting task for a professional.

In the photo: a residential building on Yaroslavsky Prospekt, photography commissioned by the company " Construction Department" to illustrate the industry directory "Investment and construction complex of St. Petersburg". The peculiarity of this shooting was that it was necessary to show the favorable location of the building in close proximity to the park area, the absence of neighboring buildings and busy transport routes.

Separately, I would like to say about the weather, which pampers St. Petersburg photographers less often than we would like. Of course, a normal specialist will photograph a building in almost any weather at a decent technical level, but for elegant, spectacular, “selling” pictures, it is highly advisable to wait for the sun in the sky:

In the photo: an example of architectural photography of residential buildings on Yakhtennaya Street. for the company LSR - Real Estate North-West.

Finding the right angle in architectural photography no less important than the shooting itself. The correct choice of shooting point determines the success or failure of the photographer. Equally important is the desire to experiment, the willingness to spend several hours trying to catch the right lighting and cloud patterns:

In the photo: residential building on the street. Krylenko, filming commissioned by a development company. In this case, I decided not to limit myself to the view of the building from ground level, but to climb to the roof of the opposite house. The shooting time (about 17 hours) was calculated in advance - the lighting emphasizes the beauty of the building.

Architectural photography during development advertising campaign sometimes plays a decisive role. In the field of construction and real estate, where competition is unusually high, it is not enough to limit ourselves to one or two types of duty - the customer and end-user wants to see not only the facade, but also views of the yard, finishing elements, and landscaping of the surrounding area. It is important to focus on transport accessibility, landscaping of the courtyard area, the presence of entrances and parking lots. Of course, the facade and the courtyard cannot be successfully illuminated at the same time - the photographer must correctly calculate work time, to photograph the building from each side at the most advantageous time.

As an example, I cite the architectural photography of “House on Tipanova” commissioned by the company “Construction Trust No. 20”.

The main difficulty of this shooting was the location of the building - a long house consisting of several buildings of the same type was built along the even, southern side of Tipanova Street. Accordingly, the most advantageous side from the point of view of perception, the façade itself, is illuminated by the sun either in the early hours or about thirty minutes before sunset. However, theory is always simpler than practice - barely having illuminated the facade, the sun hides behind the high-rise buildings of the residential complex on Kosmonavtov Ave., leaving photographers “without their nose” and builders without photographs.

The solution is obvious - we study the exact location of the building according to the cardinal directions, on the astronomical website we analyze the table of the angle of elevation of the luminary for latitude 60 * on September 14, taking into account the distance to interfering buildings and their height. Calculations showed that we have about 25 minutes at our disposal - from 19-02 to 19-29 Moscow time. The mistake in practice amounted to just a few minutes - at 19-05 the warm rays of the setting sun majestically illuminated the facade of the house. It took less than half an hour for the whole complex of work, including a series of frames using a panoramic head for the subsequent creation of a linear and cylindrical panorama. When we descended to the ground, the entire façade of the house was already in shadow - the sun had safely disappeared behind the high roofs of competitors' buildings.

Architectural photography involves not only views of facades and entire buildings - it is extremely important for the photographer to see and capture individual elements that will be useful when laying out catalogs, booklets, website design and exhibition stands:

If time permits, it makes sense to photograph architecture at different times - night shots can also be interesting. Even in the case of a new house, when the windows are not yet illuminated, lanterns, headlights of passing cars, or the night or evening sky can look attractive. And it can be interesting to just compare:

One of the stumbling blocks for beginning photographers when photographing architecture is the inevitable perspective distortion.

Many of you have noticed that houses in photographs are “falling”, and the collapse of walls that are vertical in reality can be the envy of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I briefly outlined the essence of the problem on the website page “photo recording of construction stages”. To put it in an extremely simplified manner, to minimize the blockage effect, it is necessary that the plane of the film or matrix of a digital camera at the time of shooting must be perpendicular to the horizon. In practice, this does not always happen (most of the usable area of the frame is wasted, tall buildings simply do not fit within the boundaries of the frame) and the photographer has to look for workarounds when shooting architecturally. These paths are not easy - the photographer either uses special (and rather expensive) tilt-shift lenses (from the English shift - shift, shift), see tilt-shift, or engages in subsequent computer processing of photographs, correcting the perspective in a graphics editor.

In the photo: residential buildings in St. Petersburg, commissioned photography construction companies. At construction photography showing a house that has already been built is the crown of the whole thing, the finest hour of marketers and management, a crucial stage for the photographer. In all three cases, perspective correction was performed.

The same photograph cannot exist at all - we are seeing an image with a view of almost 180 degrees; there is no way to photograph the entire house from a reasonable distance (there is simply no way to move further away). But this is why professional photographers exist, to solve problems beyond the ability of an amateur - more than a dozen individually shot frames were used to create a panorama with subsequent correction of perspective. Due to the high difference in brightness of the sky, the illuminated white facade and shadow areas, HDRi technology was used to expand the dynamic range. Result:

In the photo: a residential building in the city of Pushkin, architectural photography commissioned by the Stroyimpuls company, St. Petersburg, 2010.

Photographing architecture in winter is a separate interesting topic. This is not an easy task, especially considering the geographical location and climate of St. Petersburg. In December, at the 60th parallel, you can’t wait for the sun at all, and rare clear days, as a rule, “delight” photographers with twenty-degree frosts. And if a photographer can be persuaded to run around the house in felt boots for an hour even at minus 30, then with digital technology it is much more difficult to come to an agreement - officially, not a single professional, much less amateur, camera is designed for operation in such frost, and the batteries stop working almost immediately.

The solution, as in many other cases, lies in the skill of the photographer and the ability of the customer to clearly set the task. The terms of reference for architectural photography are drawn up (written or verbal) in advance so as not to waste precious minutes. The photographer shoots the object as quickly as possible from pre-designated points, and only then, in a warm studio, adjusts the verticals and stitches together the panoramas.

Of course, the summer view from this point seems extremely advantageous - green grass, reflection of buildings in the Neva water and other seasonal delights. But the customer, as often happens, is not going to wait six months - no one will postpone the architectural exhibition. But in this case, we were lucky with the weather - the ice-bound river and clean snow in the foreground also look advantageous. Architectural photography is not a set ready-made solutions, it requires the photographer to have the ability and desire to experiment, achieving results even in difficult weather conditions:

WITHthe qualities of a good architectural photographer The ability to turn disadvantages into advantages is considered. The mirror reflective surface of the building's façade, which sometimes gets in the way, when viewed from the right angle, turns into a “highlight”, a distinctive feature that makes it possible to distinguish the building from a number of dozens of similar ones. Photographing the architecture of the new sea terminal of St. Petersburg in Gavan, commissioned by the general contractor, summer 2011:

Architectural photography, As a rule, the goal is to obtain a documentary photograph that creates the necessary idea of the appearance of the object being photographed or its details. With this type of photography, the main task is to truthfully and accurately show the shape of the building, decoration, sculptures and decorative elements. Architectural photography can be carried out for the artistic reproduction of an object (architectural landscape). In this case, accuracy may be sacrificed for artistic expressiveness, maximum reproduction characteristic features cities, countries, eras. Peculiarities architectural style can be emphasized by the appropriate choice of shooting point, the correct angle, and the nature of the lighting. Hence, for the purpose of architectural photography May be receiving a photograph as a document or as a work of art.

Requirements for documentary architectural photographs:

1. must give a correct idea of the design and proportions of the architectural structure;

2. the vertical lines of the architectural structure must be parallel to each other and to the vertical edges (borders) of the print;

3. photography must be carried out with a lens that does not distort the geometric proportions of the object (Fig. 17.1.);

4. The tonal solution of the photo should be close to visual perception.

Features of artistic photography of architecture:

1. The lowest shooting point allows you to create a perspective that is familiar to a person. The middle point of shooting is used quite rarely for artistic photography. The top melancholy of the shooting allows you to show space;

2. it is possible to use angle photography to emphasize large or small sizes, elevating or lowering an object;

Partial closure of some objects by others;

Using the “scenes” method (arches, door and window openings);

5. to highlight the sky and clouds, you can use a polarizing filter, and in black and white photography you can also use color filters;

6. the most effective lighting is in the morning and evening hours, when the height of the sun above the horizon is approximately 25-40°;

7. in the evening in the city you can use “regime time”, when the sky is still blue, but the street lighting is already on;

8. You can take photographs of architectural ensembles without images of people as follows: use a tripod, stop the lens down, if necessary, use a neutral gray filter and a long shutter speed;

9. use of panoramic photography.

Rice. 17.1 Image distortion when photographing at an angle.

Panoramic photography- a photograph with a wide viewing angle. The panorama can be planar, cylindrical or spherical (otherwise known as cubic). Planar panorama - is projected onto a plane and can be reproduced on paper or a monitor. Such a panorama is usually obtained using panoramic cameras with a viewing angle of more than 120°, which allows you to obtain elongated frames with a wide coverage angle. Such a wide angle is achieved due to a movable lens, which rotates around its nodal point, directing the light flux following the slot shutter. Panoramic cameras can use narrow (type 135), wide (type 120) film, or have a digital matrix. You can also get a planar panorama by “stitching” frames from a regular camera, although in this case it is advisable to use a special panoramic tripod head and appropriate software. Cylindrical panorama (cyclorama) - is projected onto the side of the cylinder and has a 360° coverage. You can get such a panorama by “stitching” frames from a regular or panoramic camera. Spherical (cubic) panorama is obtained by a projection of the environment on the edge of the cube (the viewer has the feeling that he is looking at the surface of the sphere from the inside).

Architecture photography, buildings, industrial facilities has its own characteristics. Firstly, it is highly dependent on the time of year, time of day, and also on weather conditions. Visiting the site may take place several times in order to determine the time of day at which lighting, distribution of light and shadows on the site best conveys the beauty, shape and character of the building. In case of bad weather, an alternative is to take photographs during “regular hours”. At the same time, the level of illumination of the sky and the facade of the building is equalized, and due to the difference in the color temperature of the illumination of the facade and the sky, the sky becomes densely blue, even in cloudy weather.

The second feature of architectural photography is the need to use special cameras that have the ability to correct converging lines of buildings, that is, perspective distortions. When photographing architecture with a regular camera, even the most advanced one, the building will look unnatural because the plane of the film is not parallel to the plane of the building. A person sees the lines of buildings as straight because the human eye automatically corrects perspective. Therefore, when photographing architecture, it is necessary to use special gimbal cameras that have the ability to correct perspective distortions (Fig. 17.2).

Rice. 17.2. Linhof Kardan GT 4X5 gimbal camera

The advantage of a gimbal camera in architectural photography compared to a conventional one is the presence of movement of the objective and film boards, which makes it possible to “align” the building being photographed during photography. These cameras also feature a large frame format, which makes it possible to print photos with excellent detail and in almost any size. Even a 9x12 cm slide cannot be compared with digital cameras, even medium format.

Great importance in architectural photography, it has an angle and a shooting point. Photography from the lowest point, from the height of a person, is intended to show the monumentality of the building. In this case, it is important to align the building in the frame during photography. For this, either a gimbal camera or a regular camera with a shift lens is used. Special shift or tilt-shift lenses (Fig. 17.3.), are used in architectural or interior photography to align vertical lines on an object when the camera is tilted. An important property of these lenses is to control the depth of field of the photographed subject. Depth of field can be created across the entire frame, even when photographing at an angle to the subject, or you can concentrate the sharpness at one point, blurring the surroundings.

Rice. 17.3. Left: shift lens with a maximum shift of 7 mm. Right: tilt-shift lens. Maximum angle 8°, maximum movement 11 mm

Photographing architecture can also be done from a higher point, from the floor of a nearby building, and even from its roof. This has its advantages. The cars parked near the building stop “entering the frame” and the trees do not cover the façade. Taking photographs from a higher point than the height of the subject allows you to expand the perspective, show the surroundings and location of the subject architectural photography in urban environments or other areas.

You can choose a photographic angle in which the camera is positioned vertically, and, therefore, there is no need for special optics.

Photographing architecture with a north-facing façade is best done during restricted hours, or during the daytime using frame combining technology. That is, take photographs from one point, install the camera on a tripod, focus the lens in the “ manual focus", changing the shutter speed. The result is frames with a normally exposed facade and a completely white sky, and a normally exposed sky but a dark facade. By combining these frames in Photoshop, you get a beautiful photo.

Complexity interior photography associated with correct selection lighting, camera and lens, photographic point and foreground.

For illumination, when photographing interiors, either constant light sources with a color temperature of 3400°K (halogen lamps) or pulsed illuminators with a temperature of 5400°K are used. Constant light sources with daytime spectrum temperatures are rarely used due to their large dimensions and relative high cost (with the exception of high-budget filming). Using halogen lights is very convenient; you can clearly see where there is enough light and where you need to add more.

Since interior photography is usually done during the daytime, the windows take on a blue tint. If the interior lighting is correctly balanced, then the landscape outside the window does not distract attention from the interior itself.

The use of pulsed illuminators when photographing interiors makes it possible to highlight the sconces, chandeliers, and floor lamps available in the interior due to the difference in color temperature.

If the shooting takes place during the day, the light outside the window will be natural. However, balancing the light is more difficult and will take much longer.

The most interesting shots when photographing interiors can be obtained by combining lighting sources.

When shooting an interior, the main requirement is complete sharpness of all plans, therefore, when photographing large rooms, you need to correctly determine the aiming plane and choose the most rational aperture.

Problems of perspective distortion are solved in the same way as in conventional architectural photography.

Sooner or later professional photographer, or even an amateur, is faced with the task of photographing buildings. This is a rather specific area of photography, requiring the photographer to master the technique at a level that will allow even the most dull structure to be presented in all its glory. In order to emphasize all the necessary angles of architecture, be it a phlebology clinic in Moscow for an advertising campaign or an opera house, you need to become familiar with the features of architectural photography.

Sooner or later, a professional photographer, or even an amateur, is faced with the task of photographing buildings. This is a rather specific area of photography, requiring the photographer to master the technique at a level that will allow even the most dull structure to be presented in all its glory. In order to emphasize all the necessary angles of architecture, be it a phlebology clinic in Moscow for an advertising campaign or an opera house, you need to become familiar with the features of architectural photography.

Types of architectural photography

Photographing architecture is a huge field for a photographer’s creativity. It can be divided into two types:

artistic;
documentary

The basis of artistic photography is the transfer and creation of mood, the necessary emotions, as well as the ability to highlight the features of the city. Documentary photography of architecture, in turn, is aimed at conveying shapes, sizes, appearance and textures.

Rules for shooting architectural objects

The main feature of architectural photography is the immobility of objects and their constant location. After all, the same building can be photographed differently depending on the time of year and lighting.

It is believed that the best time for photographing architectural objects is a sunny day, when the rays will be evenly scattered and the shadows will be softer. Under such conditions, it is possible to clearly transmit all necessary details building.
Choose to shoot in the morning or evening hours, when the sun will create upper side lighting.
To show the volume of an object, it is better to use angular rather than façade photography.
The size of the building will help demonstrate and highlight the people or cars in the frame.
Avoid shooting a building from the bottom up if you need to show height. Try to find an angle where you don't have to raise the camera, otherwise the quality of the subject itself will suffer greatly.
If you need to highlight some element of the building, you can use the effect of black and white photography.

The key to success in architectural photography is preparation. The photographer needs to carefully study the details of the building, general form and features of architectural design, choose the right time and lighting, and then not only a professional, but also an amateur will be able to cope with the task

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