The subjects of architectural photography are some of the most dynamic forms ever captured. Architectural photography captures a series of elements including shapes, massing, and height. It also involves capturing details such as textures, colors, shadows, and light. Photographing architecture does not stop after pressing the shutter button. It also involves a post-production process that includes photo editing, cropping, resolution adjustment, and finally printing on a preferred medium. Architectural photos appear on several types of printed medium. Below are examples of popular, printed mediums for architectural photography.

Postcards – Postcards are one of the most popular mediums for architectural photography. Buildings around the world have become famous icons due to their appearance on postcards. Classic, architectural icons on postcards include The Pyramids of Egypt, The Coliseum, and The Parthenon. More contemporary examples include The Empire State Building, The Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Great Wall of China, The White House, and most recently, The National Stadium in Beijing or ‘Birdsnest’.  When taking architectural photographs as a freelance photographer, printing work on postcards can be fast, convenient and affordable using online printing services. Online printers offer custom printing of postcards at reasonable, often discounted prices.

Flyers – Flyers are also a graphic and informative medium for architectural photographs. Flyers are commonly used by real estate developers or realtors as sales flyers of current property on the market. Flyers are handy and direct, making them popular choices for marketing. Flyers today can also be printed in full color at both standard and customized sizes. Realtors, land and commercial developers can avail of professional printing services for printing wholesale orders of flyers.

Posters – Posters are ideal mediums for architectural photography due to their large formats. Large formats can mean higher resolution; capturing more architectural details, vividness and scale. Poster printing today uses full color, digital or offset printers. Travel photographers can make use of online printing services in order to print poster samples for personal or professional use.

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Nikki Sabato -
About the Author:

Nikki Sabato is a writer with a background in landscape architecture and design. She currently works in the field of marketing and design communication.

The fine art photography movement was exposed to several other artistic trends from the other domains: particularly painting and cinematography. Some of the styles presently seem out of fashion and little popular, and here we refer to the attempt to make photos as similar to paintings as possible. This trend marked the beginning of the 20th century and it is considered a step in the evolution of fine art photography. Little by little the gallery system was opened to exhibitions of various famous photographers particularly since artistic expression in pictures gained popularity.

Photojournalism and the snapshot aesthetic approach are tributary and somehow included in the fine art photography perspective, as pictures became one very touchy way of reflecting all sorts of social and human realities of our times. Art and documentary came to create a unique mixture in the evolution of present day photography, and the large number of prints and picture catalogs are just the way to prove it. Nowadays it is more than common that the regular canvases be replaced by framed and glassed pictures in a variety of wall-size prints; we could thus say that fine art photography has made its entrance in house design as well.

Staging and lighting are incredibly important for fine art photography, and very often the outcome depends on the type of camera used in the process. From medium-format and large-format cameras to digital cameras, fine art photography is definitely being more and more integrated in popular social artistic trends specific to the metropolis manifestation. Fine art photography remains however little exploited by the media, as it usually requires a well educated eye to perceive all the subtleties and the unique artistic details that remain unnoticed by the profane eye of common people.

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Muna wa Wanjiru -
About the Author:

Muna wa Wanjiru Has Been Researching and Reporting on Photography for Years. For More Information on Fine Art Photography, Visit His Site at FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY

One of the most appealing areas of photography is travel photography. When visiting a new place, every photographer wants to find a way to catch its feel, its uniqueness and bring it home with him. Travel photography can a very appealing and rewarding, yet very complex task. Just walking around and getting random shots is not the way to do it. You need to spend some time thinking about what you want to express and how.
When you think of a particular place, all the different elements that cross your mind are melt together to form its unique character or personality, that je-ne-sais-quoi that makes it different from any other place in the world. Whether it’s an old village or an exotic travel destination, a good photographer can capture its uniqueness and present it to the audience. This article is aimed to share some ideas on how to capture the character of a place through photography.

Basic Elements
A location has certain specifics that make it what it is. In most cases, these can be broken down into landscape, culture and people. Let’s take each of them separately to go into more details.

Landscape. Every little town, mountain or city looks different from any other place in the world. The architecture may be exclusive to that specific region or the natural surroundings may be unique. Think of the Gaudi area in Barcelona or the steep cliffs and rough seas of the coasts of Ireland and Scotland. Think of how the place looks like at night or early in the morning. A location takes on different personalities throughout a day and it’s important to capture each of them.

Culture. An important aspect of a destination’s character is its culture. A photographer can capture elements of culture in foods, drinks, local festivals and other things that are specific to that place. Local dishes, an yearly parade with traditional costumes or a street party are good examples.

People. People from different parts of the world look, dress and behave differently. Try to take as many photos as you can, both posed and candid, and catch people in activities the place is known for. If they are famous for being happy and lively you should take photos at parties to express this lifestyle. If they are hard working, photograph them while at work.

Creating the whole picture. To put all these elements together, zoom in on the subject. You can start with the landscape, photographing surroundings, interesting buildings and anything else to help the audience recognize the location. Then you can zoom in to people, capturing their attitudes and lifestyle. Finally you can start exploring culture. Apart from local food and festivals, photograph shop signs that can show the languages spoken there, as well as products that are a tradition for the area.

Travel photography is a very complex job because you need to be good at portrait photography, still life photography, nature photography and still life photography. Learning all these will put you on the right track of becoming a good photographer.

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Alex Don -
About the Author:

Alex is a writer about photography techniques for http://reshade.com . Reshade works in the field of online picture processing programs and offers a free online photo resizer web-tool. It’s also possible to purchase a photo resizer application for Windows. Give it a try !

There are many ways and techniques to click interior and exterior home photography. So let us see few basic tips which would help us to improve and enhance architectural photography.

Light

Light can increase the shadow, texture, contrast and reflections. The more level of contrast can also lead to the exposure of photo in an incorrect scene, but photographers can easily surmount it by just applying the compensation of exposure. Another method that we can do is that bracket the shots at different exposure and then merges them in a program.

Lens

A wide angle lens or the fish eye is perfect for this kind of photography as it allows the photographers to get the complete building into the frame. Yet sometimes the glass might not be able to include the complete scene, than you require the panoramic format.

Exterior and interior

Architecture photography is not restricted with the front of the building. It could be difficult to correct the white balance. Interior shots are difficult to take in the older buildings as there are small doors and windows, which actually lack natural light. So, try to use a tripod and you can also use the Nd filter to prevent the highlights while shooting in the day. You can also use supplementary lighting like diffused flashing.

Silhouette

If you want to shoot as the silhouette at sunset, than place the architecture between sun and yourself. Also ensure that the flash is deactivated. Night shots could be atmospheric and dramatic, but just remember to click them when there is just some color and light left in the sky as this would help to add tone in the backdrop and illuminate the detail. Make the use of long exposure and wide aperture.

Click in all weathers

Like the other kinds of photography, good images can be clicked in all kinds of weathers. Revisiting and shooting the building in the various weather conditions, can actually help a photographer to create a good portfolio of shots.

Reflection

It helps to add the extra dimensions to the architectural images. Use it in your photos as this would allow a photographer to create the canvas, where the building can be easily indistinct. Lots of reflexive surfaces are there, you do not actually need to practice. For example, water features windows, wet streets, modern art, rivers and puddles. Also they should not be graphic and aesthetic so one should play with the lines, shadows and lights.

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arvind -
About the Author:

Author is amateur wild life photographer. He is associated with Pixpa – an photography portfolio website solution provider which provides portfolio website for photographers

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Photography in the 21st Century has changed significantly from what it was only ten years ago. In the past, an architectural photographer would have a significant but one-time investment in cameras and lenses. We would be faced with ongoing expenses for film, film processing and Polaroid test film that would apply to each photograph created. At the end of the chemical era, it was not surprising for these consumable expenses to exceed $100.00 per photograph and they would constitute 25% to 50% of the cost of photographing a project. If in a day’s shoot an architectural photographer would shoot five interior images and two exterior images, at the end of the day the bill to client would be in the range of $2000.00.

The Polaroid test film we had was of low resolution, rotten color (which is why i always used B/W Polaroid) and of very limited size; my 4×5 camera used 4×5 Polaroid and we had to make all of our decisions regarding composition, lighting and styling using a 4×5 inch print and a magnifying glass. It was better than trying to look through the camera, and we worked hard at making the most of each Polaroid because we all knew they cost money and the expense could rapidly consume our financial budget without a well-disciplined approach to the use of them.

Film processing was another expense variable that relied upon the skill and technical mastery of the photographer to maintain control and not blow our budgets. Because we were working on location without the luxury of having a photo lab on hand to process the film before we broke down a set, I would normally shoot six sheets of film for each photograph at the cost of $65.00 per photograph. And if the client wanted another version of the image it would require another six sheets of film constituting an additional $65.00 added to the cost of the project. Then it could take as much as a week to process the film and deliver it to the client for preliminary review and consultation on color and cropping.

As an architectural photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area I am thankful for the advent of digital photography, because we no longer need to strain our eyes to see if the flowers in the back corner of a shot are positioned properly. Today we can review the shot at full resolution on a laptop computer at magnification equivalent to a 20×30 print or more. Now we can not only tell if the flowers are in the proper location and oriented effectively, we can determine if the blossoms are overlapping each other or if the babies breath should be thinned. We can see the texture of the fabric on the sofa and the brush strokes in the paintings and make judgments of color representation and cropping on site before we break down and move on to the next photograph.

These most prominent of the benefits of digital photography and the easiest to describe. The rapid turn around, the retouching and other capabilities the digital process gives are valuable beyond measure.  When digital photography became the standard, I and all of my clients all hoped the cost of a photo shoot would be reduced because we would no longer have the expense of Polaroid, and film processing. This hope soon faded.

The reality is that digital photographic and computer technology are advancing at remarkable rates, and to provide professional photographic services requires a significant and continual investment in upgrading hardware and software. There are significant expenses involved in simply archiving and cataloging the images we create for our clients because we need to have a triply redundant back-up system that includes off-site storage. And the expense of upgrading hardware and software is equaled or exceeded by the expense of continually learning the operation of new software and implementation of new procedures and industry standard practices to provide the services and products our clients need, not only today but in the foreseeable future as well.

The cost of consumable expenses (Polaroid test film, film and film processing) have been replaced by the cost of technology, and these costs must be billed to each photograph or project in order for the photographer to provide these services in an ongoing manner. The photographer who is not billing these costs to the project is a poor business manager and is operating with an unsustainable business model.

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Dean Birinyi -
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San Francisco Bay Area photographer Dean Birinyi creates beautiful architectural photographs that capture the emotional character of his clients’ work and communicates their talents and design concepts. With more than twenty years of experience photographing architecture and interior design, Dean listens to his clients to integrate the solutions for many different but equally important needs into any image. Dean’s talent for storytelling consistently helps his clients win design competitions. www.djbphoto.com