Architectural Photography: The Most Important Element You Need to Know 

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Glad this video is going to be helpful. Please check out the others for additional pointers. Good luck with your project.

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Thank you for your note. Much appreciated.

Yes, if you have a shift lens. But many students and amateur photographers can not afford one.

LOL Welcome to our community. I hope you find the other videos helpful in your work.

Glad this was helpful. And you’re right: the perspective tool does not work well, especially if the verticals are off by differing degrees, which can easily happen if the camera is not perfectly level. Hope you’ll check out the other videos and that they, too, will be helpful to you.

You’re very welcome, Lucian. Thanks for watching.

The view cameras they used back then were big, unwieldy instruments. But it was necessary to properly align verticals in camera for film. I've seen photographs of Eugene Atget, the French photographer, hauling his clumsy view camera around the back streets of Paris. They worked hard to get it right!

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Thank you for your note. When I photographed the first small, vernacular cottages built in Seaside, Florida (ground zero for the New Urbanism movement), it was this very exacting, formal approach that I used to intentionally ennoble these humble structures, giving them the same dignity and presence that I would give more architecturally significant projects. You may see some of them here: www.stevenbrooke.com/books-architecture/seaside-2/

@@stevenbrookephotography Thank you. I really love this work. I also appreciate Cape Light by Joel Meyerowitz

(Sorry. I just now saw this note.) Yes, Pedro, you can use the Camera Raw corrections if they are very minor. However, if the verticals are off to differing degrees, this will not work any more than the EDIT>TRANSFORM>PERSPECTIVE will work in Photoshop. Further, if the verticals are very misaligned, the auto function in Camera Raw comes up short. In the end, it is better to do this manipulation in Photoshop, one side at a time. And, following the alignment of the verticals, you are ready to reestablish the proportion if the vertical corrections "flatten out" the height of the building; and, then you are ready to correct any WARP once you've aligned the verticals. I prefer to keep this part of the workflow entirely in Photoshop.

Thanks for your note. This is easily the most asked question that I receive. It probably deserves its own video. The necessity for a 24mm perspective-control lens is at least three-fold. First, most importantly, I believe it is always better to compose your final image in-camera, rather than having to imagine what an out-of-alignment view will look like after you download and correct the verticals and horizontals post-production. Second, a PC lens allows you to shift left or right (or up and down) to adjust and fine-tune your composition. If your view is axial, that orientation is maintained. The alternative is having to reposition your tripod, which changes the relationship of items in your view; or, pivoting the camera on the tripod, which, if the view is axial, throws it out of alignment, necessitating more corrections in photoshop. Third, a PC lens allows you to stitch together several images without introducing the misalignment that occurs when you pivot the camera on your tripod (unless you do so at the lens’s nodal point, which usually requires another piece of equipment. Re: sharpness. The sensors of today’s newest digital cameras have remarkable resolution. So, shifting a PC lens, even to its extremes, is unlikely to produce unusably soft images. And, any minor degradation that does occur can easily be corrected with either Photoshop’s sharpening tools or any of the newer AI-based sharpening plug-ins. Don’t forget, you can use “Live View” with an accessory viewer like the Hoodman, to be certain your images are, in fact, wire-sharp after shifting. I have the second version of the Canon 24mm TS lens. I have had not issues with either sharpness, contrast, or chromatic aberration.

Thanks for your note. First, if I am going to pay for a subscription, I would suggest using Adobe Photoshop rather than Lightroom for processing architectural photographs. That said, I regret that I do not have experience with any other processing programs. There are several stand-alone programs that handle RAW files that offer a one-time purchase agreement. You might research these on-line and carefully check the reviews. Currently, the only class I am teaching is the fall Architectural Photography and Composition class at the University of Miami. Hopefully, I will start conducting workshops again next year.

Hi,Brett. I use PS distort because I can adjust each side individually. (That’s also why I don’t use the adjust>perspective control; it adjusts both sides at once. ) This manipulation, along with the warp adjustment, is better made in PS.

This really depends on the project, the lens you're using, and the distance from which you took the photograph. There is no set amount. After you make the vertical corrections you can decide if it needs readjustment to correction proportions. If there was a significant amount of vertical correction, you can refer back to the uncorrected image to determine how much you need to readjust the building to correct the overall proportion.

@@stevenbrookephotography I proceed from the possibility of minimal actions for transformation and its fixation. After all, every fixation of a change spoils the quality of the entire image. (Interpolation action) Thank you for your work

@@stevenbrookephotography I started making deep transformations back in 2001. In the photographer's opinion, the photos had a disgusting result. Either I left it as is or didn’t do it at all. I prefer tilt-shift lenses.

As do I

@@stevenbrookephotography Sorry, I'll tell this only to you. A year ago I bought Fuji GFX100s and during the year I bought additional GF lenses, t/s Canons, and new adapters. All this cost me $12,000. My wife is jealous of my Fuji, although she doesn't know how much it costs. Now we are sitting in an apartment in different rooms. Please pat me on the head, it will make me feel better.

Glad to hear that.

These are excellent questions, and probably should be the subject of a separate video. IMAGE DEGRADATION: Today’s cameras/lenses/sensors (even relatively inexpensive ones) are of such good quality that normal post-production corrections introduce little, if any, perceptible degradation of the image. EXTERIORS: If you don’t have the coverage, you can back up, knowing you may have to crop out extraneous foreground. My suggestion about lowering the camera with wide-angle lenses is to avoid, for example, foreground patterns (tiles, street grids, furniture, etc) that will have exaggerated distortion if your camera is up too high. If the foreground is just grass, then it’s not that critical. INTERIORS: Here is where lower camera height is particularly important with wide-angle lenses. Foreground elements show exaggerated distortion with wide-angles the higher you place your camera. My rule: go only as high as necessary to see all the elements clearly-and no higher. Also, the wider the lens, the more you should consider an axial composition (horizontals parallel to the picture plane) as that reduces foreground distortion considerably. CONVERGENCE: If you are shooting directly up at a high-rise, or a group of high-rises, and aiming for a one-point perspective, then convergence is obviously inescapable, and is part of that particular aesthetic. Otherwise, I am absolutist when it comes to properly aligned verticals. Slight convergence, to me, is like a misspelled word or playing out of tune. As architectural photographers, we are attempting to render the structures as accurately as possible, while still leaving room for artistic expression. If the building verticals are true, then the verticals in the photographic representation should be correspondingly true.

​@@stevenbrookephotography Ah that makes lots of sense, thank you for clarifying all those points on question 1! The DxO Viewpoint tutorial website has some interesting thoughts on 100% aligned verticals, it seems it is a subject where 20th century pictorial conventions and reality collide with each other. Perhaps also taste comes into it; I find correctly exposed windows on interior shots unnatural in a photo but you see this technique done a lot in real estate photography. I think when you come into a new photographic area you bring your own set of ideas about what looks good, which of course is mostly subjective. Thank you again for taking the time to reply, I eagerly await new videos on this channel!

This is a great question and I want to go into it in more detail. Thanks for bringing it up. I am planning a video specifically about how to handle views out of windows. Briefly, in the days of film, the time available to see the view was very limited: early morning or the last bit of evening light. We died to get those shots and usually planned the whole day around them! Or, of course, you could pound artificial light in to balance, which usually ended up looking like a furniture ad. The great architects and designers consider the view as part of the interior. Thus, it's important to show it. (The off-handed and regrettably popular aesthetic of blown-out windows is, I believe, a flawed approach.) Now, with layered exposures, you can really adjust the density of the view to one that looks real: not painted on (which happens if window and room densities are equal) nor blown out. More to come.

Hi, Joseph. Thank you for your note. Yes, there is a slight movement (depression toward the center of the lens) when you clean the rear lens on the 17mm; but not very much at all. If you are concerned about the image quality, I suggest having a qualified camera tech properly test it on an optical bench.

@@stevenbrookephotography Thank you, i'll make new tests this week-end to be sure it was not kind of flare or similar... at least it is not broken in the back lense area :-) thank you. By other way i'm buying your book just now. Thank you again !!!

Josep, please be aware that flare with a lens this wide is always an issue.

The Canon 5DS is no longer in production. You may find one, but they are definitely getting scarce. (Avoid a used one!) In a short time, it seems, only mirrorless cameras will be available. You might start checking these out. However, there are numerous caveats suggesting waiting until the 2nd generation versions of these cameras are available and some of the bugs are fixed. Focusing issues are reported. Read the reviews on B&H’s website. I am partial to Canon because of their excellent perspective control lenses. Admittedly, those lenses are not inexpensive. For those who contemplate photographing architecture as a profession or as part of their expanding business, I have always recommended starting with a 24mm Perspective Control lens. An alternative might be the 24-105 ZOOM: a single lens capable of shooting architecture, interiors, landscape and architectural details. The barrel distortion at the 24mm end is fixable in post-production. You are correct that it is less expensive to correct verticals in post-production. Of course, this means composing to accommodate for the loss of material when you do correct. A full-frame camera is preferred, not for low-light capability, but primarily because it provides the full coverage of any lens. For example, a 24mm lens with a 1.6 crop-factor sensor is equivalent to about a 38mm lens, not really convenient for architecture and especially too narrow for most interiors. I highly recommend a full-frame camera. If you are on a budget, I suggest finding a decent camera that you can afford and spending your money on a very good lens, as that is what is actually taking the photograph. A camera with anywhere around a 32MP sensor will do just fine.

Hi, Lisa, Thanks for your note. Here is the way to avoid having the verticals go out of alignment when you adjust the horizontals. (1) SELECT ALL > TRANSFORM > DISTORT Do this for the right vertical. (2) DESELECT (this is important to finalize the first correction) (3) SELECT ALL > TRANSFORM > DISTORT Do the left vertical. ***Remember: do each vertical separately as they may be out of alignment to different degrees. And you may have to go back and forth if the verticals are way out of alignment. This is not unusual to have to do. (4) DESELECT (5) SELECT ALL > TRANSFORM > DISTORT Now, when you correct the first horizontal, be certain that you pull the corner handle directly down or up, and that you don’t misalign the vertical when you do so. (6) DESELECT (7) SELECT ALL > TRANSFORM > DISTORT Correct the other horizontal if needed. ***The key to this admittedly tedious workflow is to DESELECT after aligning each individual side. Hope this helps.

@@stevenbrookephotography Steven. Thanks so much for your detailed reply. I really appreciate it. I will work on this today.

@@lisarutledge2404 I disagree with the advice given in this video. It offers no way of getting the height of the building correct (true to the original building proportions) after straightening the verticals. You can't just drag the height and hope for the best. If you have Lightroom you can use the auto (one-click fix) or manual tools to straighten a scene (and fix verticals) while proportionately increasing the height of the building (software uses mathematical formulae to correctly adjust the height proportionately' as you straighten it'). Photoshop has the same manual tools under Filter> Lens Correction and click on the Custom tab.

@@cooloox Thanks for this. I will try this too. Appreciated.

Thanks for your question. There are several reasons that raising the tripod is not as effective or efficient as shifting the lens. (1) The further you are away from the building, the less effect there is in raising the tripod. (2) Raising the tripod, especially elongating the center post, makes the tripod that much more unstable. (3) Most importantly, all things considered, the wider the lens you use, the lower should be your eye height to reduce the foreground distortion that occurs when the eye height is too high.

Imagine a line from the sensor, through the lens and to the building. On a standard camera, that is horizontally placed, the line will be horizontal to. When you raise the tripod the line is still horizontal, you may gain up to a meter - buildings tend to be much higher. Then use the tilt shift, or the bellow, and move the lens. The line from the sensor, through the lens and to the building is now diagonal, reaching towards the roof. That means that shifting the lens a few centimeters will raise your perspective several meters. This is too what happens when you tilt your whole camera, but then the plane of the sensor and lens compared to the building will be tilted and there for the vertical lines too.

Thanks for this important question, Michael. When correcting verticals, especially where the correction is significant, the height of the building definitely can get squashed. Generally, I re-correct by eye, using the original uncorrected version as a guide as well as my knowledge of the building's proportions. In my book, I show an example of this with the Standard Oil building in New York. (Logistics prohibited an in-camera shot with aligned verticals, even with my 17mm TS lens.) Remember, too, that if you know a significant correction will have to be made post-production, be sure to include enough material on both sides of your project, as you will lose some of this when you correct, and you don’t want the sides of your building to be too close to the edge of the frame.

@@stevenbrookephotography Never thanked you for your last response. I have a related question. I'm working on an image of a 12 story bldg. Shot off-axis at a roughly 45 degree angle to picture plane. This was my only possible shot. I computed width/height ratio from original and applied to image with corrected verticals. Of course, this makes the bldg. appear larger at top than at base, as the horizontal lines of bldg. converge. Is it ever acceptable to change the aspect ratio to minimize this visual anomaly? Other solutions? Are there shots that just don't work? Thanks, Michael

You’re very welcome for the last note. I’d like to think that there are no impossible shots. Ok, there may be a few, but with digital technology, those are few/far between. In my video “Stretch it Out” I show how you can alter the width (or height, if need be) to reduce the wide-angle curse. You can do this by eye with as much success as actually calculating it out. The latter technique may be mathematically correct, but not look right. As for its ‘legitimacy’: you do whatever it takes to make your image the way you want it. What you describe is typical of a wide-angle shot of a tall building from which you could not back up sufficiently: the top starts to prow out. This is fixable. First, make certain your verticals at the sides are as perfectly aligned as possible. Bring a few guide lines in from the ruler for the sides of your building. Then, with the EDIT>TRANSFORM>WARP controls, gradually reduce that prowing effect. This is trial/error to be sure, but it can be done. Since this is a common distortion, I will make a video specifically showing how to handle this.

I upgraded to that very camera (5Ds) and am totally satisfied with its functionality and resolution. I think you'll see the difference right away. A note: it produces very large TIFF files, so plan for computer speed and sufficient storage.

My 2 cents: Mkiv got an awesome sensor, recovery of shadows and highlight it's on another level.. 5ds and 5dsr they suffer from canon old sensors poor shadow recovery. If you need megapixel (big prints, big crops) go with 5ds or 5dsr. If you want canon best sensors stay with mkIV. By the way I have a 5dsr and I'm very happy

Thanks for your comment. And it’s a valid point. I’m aware of the automated approaches for alignment, layering, etc. I’m not at all a Luddite, but I don’t incorporate them into my videos and classes for several reasons. First, when I’ve used some of the automated plug-ins, I find I usually have to go back and tweak what the program didn’t accomplish to my satisfaction; so, in the end, it would have been easier for me to just do the entire procedure myself. Second, for vertical/horizontal alignment in particular, I haven’t found my suggested approach to be all that cumbersome. But more importantly, I eschew them for the following reason. Compared to film, digital photography is facile enough. And if you’ve worked with a view camera you know the level of concentration and involvement you need to succeed. With digital imagery, easy as it is to create the initial image, I still want my students to have a more ‘intimate’ relationship to their image, which reliance on push-a-button, automated procedures can easily obviate. I definitely want them to do the manipulations “by hand.” I actually want them to take more concentrated time to process their image. For professionals under deadlines, the shortcuts may certainly be helpful. However, I, too, am a working professional; yet, I look forward to being able to spend time developing my images slowly, manually. The time I spend restores, in some sense, the intimacy I admittedly lost when I retired my view cameras.

@@stevenbrookephotography, I see where you're coming from. For me the speedy workflow is a main argument to use specialized software for the correction (I did not mean a push-button solution. In DxO ViewPoint you set the (guide-) lines on the image and get the vertical and horizontal lines perfectly aligned.) I cannot imagine the Photoshop approach with the manual tinkering of the edges to be more precise. I do not believe that it disconnects me from the editing process too much as it is just one of many steps to transform one or several blunt RAW pictures into a pleasing end result. Streamlining my workflow is key to satisfying my clients within acceptable time limits.

@@schifferfoto8659 I'll have another look at DxO VP. Thanks.

@@stevenbrookephotography, you definitely should. They're not paying me, but I would even suggest, you check out DxO Labs as well (best Noise Reduction module I have seen so far). It integrates seamlessly into the standard Lightroom/Photoshop Workflow. Just another tool in the box. :)

Came here to say the same thing DxO ViewPoint is an integral part of my architecture photography post processing. The most recent updates make it even more valuable!

"Good architectural photography" is by no means reserved for only those with perspective-control lenses. Yes, of course, perspective-control lenses are the ideal tools for photographing architecture, and creating the best possible composition in-camera. However, these relatively expensive lenses are beyond the budget of most photographers like students, amateur photographers, and even professionals for whom architecture has not been their main income stream. For them, taking the best possible shot with their existing equipment, and correcting verticals etc post-production is the only way they can achieve architectural images with properly aligned verticals and correct proportions. In the end, all that matters is the actual veracity of the image, irrespective of how it was taken or what post-production manipulations were used.

Get off that high horse ;) Of course a tilt shift lens is the optimal choice, but technology progresses and the digitally corrected image (when done right and with good source material resoution) is almost impossible to distinguish from a genuine tilt shift shot. If the client wants to pay for it, I rent a tilt shift lens, but most clients won't for the above reason. Especially when a picture is used mainly online, there is no good reason to spend a lot of money on a fancy lens if you don't have some weird kind of fetish - no offense, just pointing out the obvious.

London just isn't the same if you don't travel there with a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce... People who travel to London by train or drive in a cheap car just don't have the same scenery as those going with a Rolls...

@@schifferfoto8659 There is always a good reason. And that is it makes your life easier getting the photo with the correct perspective in camera. Instead of having to correct the perspective of multiple photos in post. Also you lose pixels while cropping after correcting in PS or LR. Trust me I shoot architecture and I have been correcting perspectives a lot.

@@mitchellvaneijk1855- getting a tilt shift lens is not everyone's answer to making one's life easier ;)

There is definitely something undeniably romantic about using a view camera.

@@stevenbrookephotography Yes, I enjoy using them with film and the obscure collodion dry plate tannin process (which was for architecture and landscape only because of the extended exposure times). Thank-you for your RU-vid series. It is informative and helpful!

1000 thanks. Glad you enjoyed it.