Memorize These Shapes for your Architectural Photography 

Mike. Thank you very much for your kind words. I'm glad to know that these videos are proving helpful to you in your work.

Agreed! Buy the book support this guy!

You’re welcome, Cedric. I hope the videos help you with your work. S.

Thanks, Lindel. Glad you enjoyed the video.

Thanks, Andrew. The parallels are definitely there. Music, painting, even my jiu jitsu training informs everything I try to do with my photography. I'm trying my best to pass that on.

Thank you, Darryl.

You are very welcome.

Thank you, Shmuel. I am pleased to know that the videos and the book will be helping you with your work.

Thank you, Don.

You’re very welcome. Glad to know the videos are helping. I am planning a video on photographing architecture while touring.

You are very welcome, Mike. Thanks for watching.

Thank you for your note, Adrian. I hope the videos and the book will help you with your work. I grew up in Detroit, similar to Toronto it its predominance of overcast weather. A very good idea: I will definitely produce a video on just this subject. In the meantime, here are some thoughts. You can overcome some of the issues with overcast days (1) strategically (picking appropriate times of day to shoot - rarely during mid-day); (2) compositionally (try to include very little of the sky, or none at all); (3) digitally (correcting color, contrast and sky tonality in post-production). I have a video on the latter technique that works very well. And for genuine inspiration, by all means study the Dutch landscape painters who regularly dealt with such overcast conditions with compositional and technical brilliance. Jan van Goyen and Pieter di Molijn are great painters with whom to start your study.

You are very welcome. Thank you for watching these videos.

Thank you. This approach to basic shapes is the favorite of my students.

I am very pleased to hear that this was helpful to you.

Thank you.

Thanks for your note, Marcelo. For asymmetrical buildings that I still wish to center in the view, I simply use the sides of the building as a guide. When I do that, I make certain that I have sufficient space on either side of the building so it is not too close to the sides of the actual frame. (Give it 'breathing room'.) Another approach is to simply center the entrance and forego trying to place the building symmetrically in the composition.

Thank you for your note, Sam. I’m grateful that the videos will help significantly with your work. And thanks for purchasing the book. I think there is a lot in there that you will also find useful.

Thanks for your notes.

Thank you for your note. Much appreciated.

You’re very welcome. Glad the video was clarifying. Thanks for watching.

In my work in Jerusalem, Rome, Venice, New York, and now in my ever more dense Miami, I am battling the same issues. My first (even second) choice for a compositional scheme is not always available. It helps to have an arsenal of alternative frameworks into which you can successfully place your subject matter.

@@stevenbrookephotography Which I really need. I went out on Saturday and tried to recreate the shapes in the videos--interesting challenge.

أنت مرحب بك جدا sorry wrong word

Thanks for your note. That vertical can either be free-standing or right on the border, depending on the overall composition. Often, with landscape photographs that include some architecture, the vertical is free-standing.

@@stevenbrookephotography Thank You.

Kareem, Photographing a skyscraper can be challenging. Here are a few suggestions. • As suggested in my video Back Up-Zoom In, use your widest lens and try to get as far back as you can so that you can capture the entire building without having to introduce much (or any) vertical distortion. If you do have parallax distortion, you can fix that in photoshop, keeping in mind that you might have to do an additional correction to restore the proper proportion of the building if the parallax correction was extreme. Clearly, you will have more foreground and information on the sides to deal with compositionally. Crop out what you don't want or need. • f/11 or f/16 will give you sufficient depth of field. I would still keep my ISO at 100 and, of course, use a tripod. • If you can’t back up enough and circumstances force you to tilt your camera, my recommendation would be to keep the horizontals parallel to the picture plane so that you have compositional stability in at least one direction. That will make the parallax correction easier to accomplish. • If at all possible, find a higher vantage point (another building, a parking garage). Half-way up is ideal, and the people and traffic at ground level are no longer an issue. • If you can’t photograph the main façade on axis, remember to avoid putting the corner of the building in the very center of the composition.

We determined that a print copy of a 360-page would be prohibitively expensive, especially for students. That said, any part of the book may be printed. If we find a workable print-on-demand solution, I will certainly let our community know about it.

Thanks for your note, Anton. It was always my aim with these videos to make the information available to as wide an audience as possible: students, amateurs, even professionals from other fields thinking about adding architectural photography to their business. My ebook, which is a complete course in architectural photography and which may be found here stevenbrookephotography.com, serves to support the site. It is my intention to keep these videos available free of charge. I am pleased that you have found this one helpful, and that you'll have a look at some of the others. Good luck with your work. S

I do know the effect of using IR. (Besides blackening the skies and making the clouds jump off the page, I remember that it always made the greens very light - almost white.) And I recall that it was a bit tricky to handle - very easily fogged, I think. In the days of film, to get those deep skies in b/w, I used a red or deep orange filter and a film like Plus X, at the cost of several stops of light. Now, with digital imaging, I always shoot in color and do the b/w conversions in post-production. When I want that effect in the sky, I simply decrease the blue and cyan channels. Admittedly, It's not always appropriate; but when it is (as with some of my art deco and modern-era Rome photographs), this is a very easy way to achieve that powerfully dramatic effect.

@@stevenbrookephotography , thank you!

Thank you for that.

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