Architecture photography is all about buildings, bridges, other man made structures and cityscapes. The very “stationary” nature of architecture presents a unique opportunity for photographers to find elements that play to its strengths. Of course, leading lines, strong contrast, shapes, and a strong emphasis on symmetry can all yield incredible results.
Saurav Sinha, shows us the process he goes through in assessing a scene and the creative liberties he takes to spice up his images. Some of his points of focus include time and weather, lens distortion and exposure bracketing.
Exposure bracketing lends itself strongly to HDR techniques. In other words, you take the same image (usually in a set of 3 or 5 images) at various exposure intervals (.3 or .5 EV) and then blend them together in your editing software of choice. This ensure that you retain all the details in both your shadows and your highlights. This type of technique can be quite handy in landscape photography as well when you are dealing with adverse lighting.
Lens distortion is an issue caused by your camera’s interpretation of a scene in 2D. As Saurav clearly states, unless you are using a tilt shift lens (which can be incredibly expensive), lens distortion can become an issue. When you tilt your camera upwards, lines tend to converge. When you tilt your camera down, lines tend to diverge. Of course, in real life buildings are straight (usually). Saurav does a great job showing us how to fix this in post but also how to use this problem as a compositional element. Leading lines are a great way to highlight your subject. We know the human eye gravitates towards a specific point of interest. Therefore, by using converging lines, you can certainly enhance your subject with a strong sense of intent.
Check out the rest of the video for all the details. I especially like how Saurav also makes use of mobile photography to not only take amazing images but also to record potential locations for future exploration.