Photography of architecture. Why do you need to photograph architecture, and who has succeeded the most in this? Use long lenses

telephoto lens allows you to slide on the small details that cover the building. The dashboard will help to highlight for the viewer the elements that emphasize 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 the 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 of composing a shot. Thus, interest and tension in the frame increases. The best way to do this is to use transformer(zoom lens). In this case, shooting is carried out with filling the frame. And note that most buildings include symmetrical elements in their structure. They can be used to enhance the composition. Some architectural photographers hold your hand at the bridge of your nose to help you create a frame around the symmetrical points.

Reflections

Sometimes meet building, especially in modern areas of the city, which 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 reservoirs, 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 comparing an old building to an ultra-modern building next door. Or a very bright colorful wall with a smooth, monotonous surface. Or just watch where the light falls to capture areas of light and shadow on the subject.

Light and shadow

Building riddled with areas of high contrast. They are may deceive system exposure metering cameras. This problem is especially relevant if you want to capture details in both shadowy and prominent areas of a building at the same time. The solution to the problem is 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 at the lowest value and work your way up, switching until you find the level of detail that suits you.

Scale

You can convey the size of the subject by including some attributes of everyday life in the frame, such as a bench on the street, traffic lights, street lights, cars, passers-by, trees, etc. On the other hand, try a variation where you could avoid secondary objects altogether to give the audience a sense of perspective and scale.

prospective correction

Many shots of architectural structures show distorted lines, especially if you use a wide-angle lens at a short focal length. And at the same time taking pictures while standing down on the ground. To straighten these lines, there are a number of programs or plug-ins that allow you to eliminate distortion. But such curvature can also be used to the advantage of 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 exterior walls hide, i.e. interior. The main problem we face here is the lack of sufficient lighting. Especially since in some places the use of flash is limited. To combat this, use a lens with a wide aperture and increase the ISO. You can also fix the camera, choose a slow shutter speed and use the self-timer to take a picture. Where flash is acceptable, try using a diffuser to soften the harsh light that comes from a direct flash. The flash often distorts the scene's texture and color.

Silhouette Shooting

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

Night photography of architecture

Photographing buildings at night allows you to create fantastic scenes. This gives great opportunities for creative expression. Interesting results are obtained by shooting taken before complete darkness, at dusk, 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 light up in the windows of the houses, the headlights of the cars to light up.

Vlast together with Archcode Almaty continues a series of informative lectures on architecture. Well-known architectural photographer Yuri Palmin visited Almaty. At the request of Archcode Almaty and the Government, he met with photographers and subscribers of our site and gave a concise course in architectural photography.

Video recording of the lecture:

Full lecture transcript:

I am happy to be here, in your city, and to be engaged in 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 the occupation, I've been doing this too much already somehow. In principle, this is the only thing I know how to do and therefore I will talk to you about it. I very much hope that our meeting today can be of benefit to all of us. I think to build tonight like this: I will make an introduction, which I will try to keep as short as possible. Please forgive me if it drags on. In fact, this is a squeezed course in architectural photography, which I only read three classes, and then take credit for it. Of course, today I will not torment you with either one or the other, I will try to make this introduction as short as possible, because I think that this story is the history of history, it is extremely important for a general understanding of what I do and what I think 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 program "Photography. Basic course "in the 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 filled with images. Images rain down on us from everywhere, we choke on 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 separation, photographers are everything. And I do not 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 the acquisition and delivery of 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, how the profession arose in general. Then I will show a couple of my projects. In the first part of my photos will not be, they are not included in the history of architectural photography.

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

Architecture is a very tasty subject for photography, especially for early photography. It is clear why. Firstly, because the architecture does not move and we can shoot with long exposures, so we do not need to clamp a person in a special vise, as when portraiture, so that he does not move during a four-minute exposure. Secondly, which is very important, architecture is an undeniable value. That is, when shooting an architectural monument, we convey visual information about a deliberately valuable object, this is very important. In addition, at the same time, the architectural profession also begins to undergo changes related to the fact that engineering penetrates into architecture, they begin 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 19th century and beyond. And at the same time, the Paris Geographical Society was founded in Paris, this is the first team of architectural photographers who work under the guidance of Eduard Baldus - in fact, the founder of the profession. These people work on behalf of the city authorities, they fix the city, which is going through the most serious changes that have ever happened to the city in a short time in general in the history of the urbanist. These are not gradual, not natural changes, but changes, one might say, violent ones. Therefore, firstly, the city must be fixed. Secondly, it is necessary to compile a list of city objects that constitute its unconditional value.

Looking at these photographs, we can see that a set of instructions for shooting architecture has been developed. First, the architecture should be filmed – if possible, facades should be filmed frontally. 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, for all her history. This is such a small technical detail that says a lot about our profession. As you can see, in these photos, all 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 parallels collapse, and we are already used to it actually. Moreover, by tilting the camera, we get an image that does not match the way we see it. While when we look at architecture with our eyes, or rather not only with our eyes, but also with our brain, we are constantly correcting the vertical perspective based on the data that 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 a correction in technical photography is very simple. The mid-19th century camera has independent lens and film boards, so we can move the lens parallel to the film, sort of lowering the horizon and keeping the vertical parallel. This is what shift lenses do now. Then all the lenses were shift. And this is also one of the instructions: this is the maximum frontality and light that emphasizes the details as much as possible.

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 just everywhere. This is a sticker. It was impossible to photograph such an interior with lenses of that time, they were not wide enough. Therefore, the photograph is taken in fragments. Then these fragments - the 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 technique was invented then, in the middle of the 19th century.

I immediately jump, as it were, to such 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 creativity, extremely intense, these are 42 photographs of the facades of Europe. Here are the photos.

We see that they are somehow similar to what the French shot, but if we look closely at them, we will see that in fact it is impossible to take such a photograph. Because the angles under which specific details of the facades are visible are actually taken from different points. Our eye wants to see it that way. In fact, looking at this facade, we, our brain, see something like this, but we will never be able to take a picture 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-focus lens from different points of the city and then corrected and glued together. This is approximately what Baldus did, only much 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 is sure to be restored, the same with the Cologne Cathedral. Accordingly, Brunetti returns to the same place, he, of course, has everything written down. He comes back, makes the appropriate takes and then sews the fruit of this many years of work into pictures like this. It is also remarkable here that the architects of the buildings did not even see such a facade, because, as a rule, the creation of the facade of a Gothic or Renaissance cathedral took not a single generation. The architect could draw it, but he couldn't see it because he was dying by the time half the job was done. Another of the undisputed successors 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, one lens and 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 contemporary art and founded a school of artistic photography in Düsseldorf. Of their students, 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 already 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 the famous Struth series - “Streets”, they shot 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 the world has ever seen. This is a photograph of the warehouse of the Ricola confectionery factory in Switzerland.

"Herzog and de Meuron" is one of the most famous architectural firms. You have probably seen one of their latest projects - Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. This is one of the largest in general and the most expensive works of architecture of recent times.

The second figure opposite to Baldus, who, as we see, founded a lot of things, is Eugene Atget - a figure extremely important 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 flaneurs at the end of the 19th century. It is clear that the concept of "flaner" then, through Walter Benjamin and later, through the situationists of the 60s, became one of the fundamental concepts of the new left urban culture. A flaneur is a person who can get lost in his own city. A flaner is a person who walks around the city without knowing where, and who is not interested in the goal, but in the movement itself. A flaner is, as it were, such 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 does not tolerate ... For him, these urban reforms are an incision into the city's fabrics, which he subtly feels, and to which he relates very personally, intimately.

Walter Benjamin says that Atget's photographs are crime scene photographs, where you see, he sometimes has people. 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 already verified information, Atget did not move around the city like the arrows of a measuring device, but drew the city into squares and planned his walks. And this romantic veil of flanking, unfortunately, we must admit, the history of art removed from him. Then we move on chronologically.

Atget's followers are romantic photographers, photographers for whom a work of architecture is not some object that needs to be captured, but a part of some of their inner world, which they capture by photographing the outside world. Then the 20th century begins. Interesting developments begin to occur, partly due to the technical changes taking place in photography itself. Photography is becoming very popular. Special skills and abilities are not needed in order to produce high-quality prints.

Albert Renger-Patch is one of the leaders and founders of the New Objectivity movement in Germany in the 1920s. And his main contribution to architectural photography is that it is Renger-Patch who introduces everyday life into everyday life and into the discourse of architectural photography. That is, he shoots both architectural monuments and city views as monuments.

In this case, this embankment is, as it were, shot in the right light, it is, of course, taken in compliance with all the canons of architectural photography, but what is shot here: whether the bell tower, or the facades of houses, or the fences that are in the foreground, we cannot say, because that everything is here. It is like an urban environment that is not divided into separate objects for him.

He goes even further and begins to photograph industrial facilities, showing the beauty of industrial facilities, which for him is equated with 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 released 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 - 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 besides 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 tell us who took a camera in these very 20s in Germany? They say that photographic technology does not have such filters. Yes, it is soulless, but at the same time, it is deprived of this constant reconciliation or something, with the standards and criteria that culture has brought to us. And this remarkable 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 it with our eyes and brain.

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

She begins to do what the photographer simply could not afford before or what was a mistake. The camera moved off the tripod and took such a picture. Why did this become possible? Actually there are several explanations. The first explanation: the new materiality has opened up this very new sincerity of photographic technique.

And secondly, there were cameras working with narrow film. And in fact there has been a revolution that I believe is more serious in photographic technology than the advent of digital. Because a person began to understand that each frame is not a photographic plate that needs to be developed separately, bought there, loaded, carried with you limited quantity of these very sheets, because this is the weight, a video appeared in which there are 36 frames, in principle, you can shoot 10 of these videos. Stuff yourself a wardrobe trunk and shoot for your pleasure and experiment. And with that, the tripod fell off. Dropping a tripod is like dropping a monkey's tail, and it has led to a huge change in photographic aesthetics. Here are, for example, radical downward angles. You can't just set up a tripod with a big camera. Curiously, the love of angles and the craze for this new aesthetic has suddenly begun to give way to the much stricter and newer rules that are emerging in architectural photography. I am now 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 has never photographed. Actually it is not. Now there is a book of photographs by Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier shot from about 1907 to 1915, and he shot everything, after which he wrote that I was one of those fools who bought a cheap Kodak camera and spent crazy money on film, and only after 5 years I realized that photography - a fruitless occupation and completely unnecessary for an architect, and then I threw out this camera and picked up a pencil. But somehow Le Corbusier still needed to fix his architecture, and this tandem developed here. The best photographs of Le Corbusier were taken by Lucien Hervé. What's great about these photos? Look, architecture ceases to be a monument, ceases to be an object that has a top / bottom, right / left, which must be framed and completely placed in the frame.

The value of a fragment in this case is not the value that a capital or any other architectural detail has in the old photograph when the fragments were taken. Architecture here becomes, as it were, an object that can be explored just like you can explore the world 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 make a separate lecture for many hours, because it is very interesting topic. Now dissertations are being written about this. What is important is that it is in Lucien Hervé's photography that finally appears what architectural photographers use all the time now - photographers are starting 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 goes obliquely through it. We see different textures of concrete, and here these textures form the main subject of photography. This tactility that appears in photography, it didn’t exist before, because before photography is such a picture, here is a house somewhere, on some other continent, so we photographed it, transferred 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, from as far away as possible. That is, to make the most impersonal presentation of a work of architecture. The longer our lens, the closer the picture is to axonometry. There can be no axonometric picture in a photograph, because we will always have perspective distortions. But axonometry is such a view of God, it is such a view 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 in the foreground is here for a reason. It's not just parked here and it can't be removed, as often such situations haunt me here, it's here on purpose, because this white surface works with Guggenheim's shapes and curves.

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

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

Shulman put this photo 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 an American family home, this story is completely non-standard: the girls hang over the city, at 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 isn't perfect by today's standards, but... About Julius Shulman is the only architectural photographer to have a feature-length documentary called Visual Acoustics, with Dustin Hoffman narrating.

This is a very funny photo of Shulman, which shows how advertising character, as far as we now see, this frame has been made and set, especially when it is in color. Everyone, let's move on to our time. Perhaps one of the most serious classic photographers who are now living and working actively is Ellen Binet.

I am happy to be acquainted with her, for me she is just a living classic, a person who greatly influenced me, but, unfortunately, now Ellen is possessed by very strong pessimistic feelings, sensations and views in general about what is happening with architectural photography now.

Helene Binet is a close friend of the architects she has worked with, which is very important. She was a very close friend of Zaha Hadid and that's why I think that Helen Binet's photographs of Zaha Hadid's work are much better than Zaha's architecture. She was very friendly and is friends with Peter Zumthor, I don’t think here ... there is parity here, let’s say so.

Here is the photo taken by everyone who finds himself in the small chapel of Brother Klaus by the architect Peter Zumthor near Cologne. Doesn't go there public transport. It's like this special place, where you need to get around from the nearest railway station on foot 6 kilometers, this is very important, part of such an architectural experience. And this is a photograph that everyone who gets there takes. Each person raises the camera up, removes this drop - the window. This chapel is arranged in this way: Zumthor made a formwork from deadwood found by his students in the surrounding forest, such a hut was built, then it was used as a formwork for concrete, after which the trunks were set on fire and at a certain moment, when the concrete was just coming up, and the ashes mixed with the hardening concrete, and formed an absolutely amazing, unique texture of the interior decoration. After that, glass drops were still inserted there, which are like dew on this ashes. This is an amazingly subtle thing. Everyone takes such a photo, this photo can be shown on the screen, you can watch it on the Internet, but you will not see it. It is remarkable in that it is filmed on a large format and it looks only in a print. I now mostly work with digital and I understand very well what I lose by not working with film. Here is Helene Binet, she is like one of the last real classical architectural photographers, she doesn’t even have a camera on her phone. For her, it is very important that she does not have a digital device for recording information.

This photograph is the Columbus Museum, the Archbishop's Museum in Cologne, also by the architect Peter Zumthor, and this is a picture that you will never see with your eyes, because it is a reflection, it is a glare on the ceiling, such a hairy texture, glare from the sun reflecting from a puddle, which is outside, 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 such an era of close connection between contemporary art and architectural photography. Hiroshi Sugimoto, the famous Japanese artist and photographer, shoots works of modern architecture, reducing sharpness very strongly. Thus, he, as it were, imitates this state of relaxed attention. A state at the edge of the field of view, such a side view of important architecture. On the one hand, this is important, but on the other hand, it is not drastic.

Such sharpness happens, unfortunately, only on large-format film, and you also need to look at 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 in planes and hotels and travels all over the world and shoots everything that is stellar and expensive. I say that he seems to be baptizing. Until he christened the building, it's like it doesn't exist. But then Baan arrived, who, like an angel, flies around the world, and the building began to exist. This is a very important figure.

This is his photo of New York after Hurricane Sandy in November 2012, when half the city was without electricity. Baan at first thought to take a car, but it was impossible to get 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 shooting architecture. He then held an auction and sold, I think, 20 copies for a huge amount of money, which went to the Sandy relief fund. Ivan Baan is an interesting character.

Because in fact, I have already said that it was customary to shoot architecture in the 80s and 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 don’t understand what it really is - jewelry it's a sculpture. Such a picture captured the entire architectural press in the 80s and owned it until the middle of the 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, made quite recently, somewhere in the middle of the 2000s, a real revolution. He began not just to shoot people in architecture, but began to drive people into architecture.

As I was told, when Ivan Baan comes to Herzog & de Meuron to shoot new architecture, all 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 act from office workers to passers-by on the set of Baan.

Yes, this is how Ivan Baan shoots without people, Fondation Louis Vuitton, this is a classic architectural photograph that you don’t have to sign. In principle, everyone shoots the same now. You know there is archdaily.com, the premier architecture media, and you really rarely see an interesting personality in architecture photography there. Basically, all the architecture there is also filmed according to the canons.

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

In a nutshell: this is a gigantic 40-something-story office building that was unfinished. They began to build it on the rise of the Venezuelan economy, which was in the late 90s, then it was abandoned, and then a terrible economic crisis and the building was taken over by the homeless. And this is a gigantic squat, which gradually formed its own economy, its own sociology. For example, they somehow forwarded electricity from neighboring lighting matches, but they didn’t have an elevator, but they had a ramp that went up to the 22nd floor and there were special indoor taxi-elevators that carried people. Baan studied it from bottom to top, including some curiosities, for example, a grandmother who was raised to the 34th floor. She is paralyzed and everyone knows that her grandmother will never go down from the 34th floor, that she will live and die there. They have their own shops and cafes there. Then Ivan Baan shoots this series in 2012, receives his Golden Lion, he and the band .... This is such a theoretical architectural research group, well, in general, close to the Almaty Archcode, working all over the world, they get their Golden Lion, it becomes public, after that in 2014 this building becomes world famous, because Brody from the series is hiding there " Homeland. 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 him, after which a terrible purge takes place using the army and everyone is expelled from there. And that's all, now this skeleton stands separately, behind barbed wire and no one lives there and there is no life there. This strange story, in fact, architectural photography served as a catalyst for this whole story.

I bring this to the fact that now, at the present time, architectural photography is incomprehensible where. 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 render he sold to the client can actually be photographed actually exists as a fact. This is a commissioned photo. Photography of historical architecture certainly remains in its niche. This is what I now prefer to do for the most part. And in fact, there is no critical photography - neither as a school, nor as an aesthetic. 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, we have already finished, only in a different way. This was my introduction, sorry for some confusion, to the history of architectural photography.

Now I will show you my project. This is the first work that I did not by order of architects, but partly by own initiative. This is the Chertanovo series, 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. It was such an idea of Avvakumov, a series of twenty-four exhibitions that opened every second Thursday of every month. There were 24 photographs in each exhibition and they had to be authored by either an architecture photographer or an architect photographer 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 such rather important objects of post-war modernism for Moscow. It was built for a very long time and poorly, and it was built only in the early 80s. But all the same, some basic architectural ideas embedded in it, they are there. In particular, one of these ideas - he looks very close to the English brutalism of the 60s. There ideas of the Smithsons are generally quite guilty even in this photo. For example, what is introduced artificial relief in the area.

For example, this hill, under which construction debris is buried. But this is a 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 take place, and each family would not be given a separate apartment either. Yes, and in general with socialism there are small problems. But on the other hand, 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, which was made by the Swedes, is still in operation. In general, everything is serious there. And it was even more serious. For example, halls on the ground floors in all houses are non-residential. According to the initial projects, which were developed by sociologists together with architects, there were supposed to be refrigerators in the halls, in which it was possible to leave a list of products to the concierge, people bought the products, and by the evening they lay in the refrigerator on the shelf of this tenant. But in fact, all this was built quite badly, the structure of separation of traffic flows and people, close to what Le Corbusier and Siam advocated, this horizontal stratification, has already stopped working at the construction stage. That is, part of the flow of cars was allowed above the ground instead of letting everything underground, so now it’s impossible to park there, it’s impossible to bring anything to the entrance, everything is forced by cars and there’s no way to fight it, because underground automobile communications are clogged. But I was struck by what I finally saw in this architecture ... if it had previously represented for me everything that I did not like in this past life gray, Soviet, very poor, and limited. And architecture for me was like a sign of that life. Here I already 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 turned on, as it were.

Nikolai Malinin, my co-author of the book, attributes this to me. Actually it is not. I ended up in right time in the right place and did the right thing. And so I made such a series about the existence of this area, unadorned, but at the same time somewhat romanticized in such a way. Curator Avvakumov then wrote in the water text for the exhibition that Brodsky said that if a neutron bomb is dropped on Leningrad, which destroys all life, leaves all the infrastructure, then Petersburg will remain. But Palmin proved that if a neutron bomb was dropped on Northern Chertanovo, then Northern Chertanovo would remain. That's about such a heavenly Chertanovo, devoid of inhabitants, such a failed paradise, I made. In fact, this work is extremely important to me. And it was this work that prompted me to what I am doing now here, what I am trying to do in Moscow with architecture, as if deprived of public attention. I am very interested in the topic of consciously directing the flow of my attention, my vision, and not only my own, but through myself 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 in an attractive way for the observer. The main customers of architectural photography - construction companies, real estate agencies, advertising companies.

In architectural photography two main concepts can be traced, sometimes complementary to each other. In the first case, the purpose of shooting is to document reality with maximum realism - the exact preservation of proportions, binding to the area, neighboring buildings. Such photography of architecture is in demand by builders when compiling a passport for an object, preparing reporting documents and tender applications for permits and regulatory authorities, government agencies, for 3D rendering and subsequent modeling. Lighting in this case is not as important as the competent choice of the shooting point and angle by the photographer.

The second, more frequent case of ordering architectural photography is called "make me beautiful." When the task of a photo shoot is to get the most "advertising" pictures, everything is important - the point of shooting, the angle, the absence of details that distract the attention of the observer, the intensity and nature of the illumination of the facade of buildings, color temperature, moderate perspective distortions, the ability of the photographer to optimally fit the building into the boundaries of the frame. The solution of such problems is very rarely subject to an amateur photographer. Artistic expressiveness of images, correct rendering of proportions and colors, respectful attitude to 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 guide "Investment and Construction Complex of St. Petersburg". The peculiarity of this survey was to show the favorable location of the building in close proximity to the park area, the absence of neighboring buildings and busy highways.

Separately, I would like to say about the weather, which indulges St. Petersburg photographers less often than we would like. Of course, a normal specialist will shoot a building in almost any weather at a decent technical level, but for elegant, spectacular, "selling" pictures, it is highly desirable 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 -Nedvizhimost North-West.

Finding the Right Angle in Architectural Photography no less important than the shooting itself. The right 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: a residential building on the street. Krylenko, shooting commissioned by the developer. 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 duty types - the customer and end-user wants to see not only the facade, but also views of the courtyard, decoration elements, and landscaping of the adjacent territory. It is important to focus on transport accessibility, landscaping of the courtyard area, the presence of entrances and parking lots. Of course, the façade and the courtyard are not well lit at the same time - the photographer must correctly calculate the working time in order to photograph the building from each side at the most "winning" time.

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

The main difficulty of this survey 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 favorable side from the point of view of perception - the facade itself, is illuminated by the sun either in the early hours, or about thirty minutes before sunset. However, the theory is always simpler than practice - barely illuminating the facade, the sun hides behind the high-rise buildings of the residential complex on Cosmonauts Avenue, leaving photographers "with a nose" and builders without photos.

The solution is obvious - we study the exact location of the building in the cardinal directions, on the astronomical site we analyze the table of the angle of the luminary's elevation 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 error in practice was literally 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 works, 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 facade of the house was already in the shade - the sun had safely disappeared behind the high roofs of the competitors' buildings.

Architectural photography involves not only views of facades and buildings as a whole - it is extremely important for a photographer to see and capture individual elements that will be useful when laying out booklet catalogs, designing a website and exhibition stands:

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

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

Many of you have noticed that the houses in the photographs "fall", and the Leaning Tower of Pisa can envy the blockage of vertical walls in reality. I have repeatedly indicated the essence of the problem on the site page " photographic fixation of construction stages". To put it very simply, in order 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 should be perpendicular to the horizon. This is far from always the case in practice (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 architectural photography. 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 is engaged in subsequent computer processing of photographs, correcting the perspective in a graphics editor.

In the photo: residential buildings in St. Petersburg, shooting by order construction companies. At photography of construction showing an already erected house is the crown of the whole business, 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 observing an image with a view of almost 180 degrees, the whole house from a reasonable distance (it is simply impossible to move further) cannot be photographed in any way. But that's what professional photographers are for, to solve problems beyond the control of an amateur - more than a dozen separately taken frames were used to create a panorama with subsequent perspective correction. Due to the high brightness difference of the sky, the illuminated white facade and shadow areas, HDRi dynamic range expansion technology was used. Result:

In the photo: a residential building in Pushkin, architectural photography commissioned by Stroyimpulse, St. Petersburg, 2010

Photographing architecture in winter is a separate interesting topic. This is not an easy task, especially given the geographic location and climate of St. Petersburg. The sun in December at the 60th parallel can not wait at all, and rare clear days, as a rule, "please" photographers with twenty degrees of frost. And if a photographer can be persuaded to run around the house in felt boots for an hour and at minus 30, then with digital technology it is much more difficult to agree - officially, not a single professional, and even more so, an amateur camera is intended for operation in such a 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 (in writing or orally) in advance so as not to waste precious minutes. As quickly as possible, the photographer shoots the object from pre-designated points, and only then, in a warm studio, he corrects the verticals and glues the panoramas.

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

FROMthe property of a good architectural photographer the ability to turn weaknesses into strengths. The mirror reflective surface of the facade of the building, which sometimes interferes greatly, with the right angle turns into a "zest", a distinctive feature that allows you to distinguish the building from a number of dozens of similar ones. Photography of the architecture of the new St. Petersburg Marine Station in Gavan, commissioned by the general contractor, summer 2011:

architectural photography, as a rule, aims to obtain a documentary image 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 artistic reproduction of an object (architectural landscape). In this case, accuracy can 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 right angle, the nature of the lighting. Consequently, 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 structure and proportions of an architectural structure;

2. vertical lines of an architectural structure must be parallel to each other and to the vertical edges (boundaries) of the imprint;

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 image should be close to visual perception.

Features of artistic photography of architecture:

1. the lower shooting point allows you to create a familiar perspective for a person. The average shooting point for artistic photography is used quite rarely. The upper longing of the shooting allows you to show the space;

2. it is possible to use foreshortening for emphasizing large or small sizes, raising or lowering an object;

Partial closure of some objects by others;

Using the "backstage" 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 spectacular lighting 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 the "regime time", when the sky is still blue, but the street lighting is already on;

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

9. the use of panoramic shooting.

Rice. 17.1 Image distortion when photographing at an angle.

Panoramic photography- a photograph with a large viewing angle. The panorama can be planar, cylindrical or spherical (otherwise called 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 get elongated frames with a wide coverage angle. Such a wide angle is achieved due to the movable lens, which rotates around its nodal point, directing the light flux after the slotted 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 conventional camera, although in this case it is advisable to use a special panoramic tripod head and appropriate software. Cylindrical panorama (cyclorama) - is projected on the side of the cylinder and has a coverage of 360°. You can get such a panorama by "stitching" frames from a conventional or panoramic camera. Spherical (cubic) panorama obtained by the projection of the environment on the face of the cube (the viewer gets the feeling that he is looking at the surface of the sphere from the inside).

Photography of architecture, buildings, industrial facilities has its own characteristics. Firstly, it is highly dependent on the time of year, time of day, and weather conditions. Departure to the object can take place several times in order to determine the time of day at which the lighting, distribution of light and shadows on the object best conveys the beauty, shape and character of the building. In case of bad weather, an alternative is to take pictures during "regular time". At the same time, the level of illumination of the sky and the facade of the building are aligned, and due to the difference in the color temperature of the illumination of the facade and the sky, the sky becomes deep blue, even in cloudy weather.

The second feature of photography of architecture 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 conventional camera, even the most advanced one, the building will look unnatural, since 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 the perspective. Therefore, in photographing architecture, one has to use special, gimbal cameras, which have the ability to correct perspective distortions (Fig. 17.2).

Rice. 17.2. Gimbal Camera Linhof Kardan GT 4X5

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. Also in these cameras the big format of a frame is realized that gives the chance to print out photos with magnificent detailing and practically any size. Even a 9x12 cm slide cannot be compared with digital cameras, even medium format ones.

Of great importance in photographing architecture is the angle and point of shooting. Photographing from a lower point, from the height of a person, is designed 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 conventional camera with a shift lens is used. Special shift or tilt-shift lenses (Fig. 17.3.), are used in photography of architecture or interiors in order to align vertical lines on an object when the camera is tilted. An important property of these lenses is the control of the depth of field of the subject of photography. Depth of field can be done throughout the frame, even when shooting at an angle to the subject, or you can concentrate the sharpness at one point, blurring the environment.

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

Photography of architecture can also be done from a higher point, from the floor of a nearby building and even from its roof. This has its own advantages. Cars parked near the building cease to “climb into the frame”, trees do not cover the facade. Taking a photo from a higher point than the height of the subject allows you to expand the perspective, show the surroundings and the location of the subject architectural photography in urban or other areas.

You can choose the angle of photography, in which the camera is set vertically, and, therefore, the need for special optics is eliminated.

Photography of architecture with a facade to the north is best done in regime time, or in the daytime using frame combination technology. That is, to take pictures from one point, setting the camera on a tripod, focusing the lens in the position " manual focus” by changing the shutter speed. The result is shots with a normally exposed facade and a completely white sky, and a normally exposed sky but a dark facade. Putting these frames in Photoshop, get a great photo.

Complexity photography of interiors associated with the right choice lighting, camera and lens, photo 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. Sources of constant light with a daytime spectrum temperature are rarely used because of their large size and relative high cost (the exception is high-budget shooting). The use of halogen illuminators is very convenient, you can clearly see where there is enough light and where you need to add.

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

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

If the shooting takes place during the daytime, 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 light sources.

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

Perspective distortion problems are solved in the same way as in conventional architectural photography.

Sooner or later professional photographer, or even an amateur, faces the challenge of shooting buildings. This is a rather specific area of photography, requiring the photographer to master the technique at a level that will allow him to present even the most dull building in all its glory. In order to emphasize all the necessary angles of architecture, whether it is a phlebology clinic in Moscow for an advertising campaign or an opera house, you need to familiarize yourself with the features of architectural photography.

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

Types of architectural photography

Shooting architecture is a huge field for the 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 emphasize the features of the city. Documentary filming of architecture, in turn, is aimed at conveying shapes, sizes, appearance and invoices.

Rules for shooting architectural objects

The main feature of architectural photography is the immobility of objects and their permanent location. After all, the same building can be rented in different ways depending on the time of year and lighting.

It is believed that the best time to shoot 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 convey all necessary details building.
Choose to shoot in the morning or evening hours, when the sun will create the upper side lighting.
To show the volume of an object, it is better to use not facade, but angle shooting.
The dimensions of the building will help to demonstrate and emphasize the people or cars taken in the frame.
Refuse to shoot the building from the bottom up if you need to show the height. Try to find an angle where you don't have to raise the camera, otherwise the quality of the object itself will suffer greatly.
If you need to highlight some element of the building, you can use the effect of black and white shooting.

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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