Architectural Photography: The Most Important Element You Need to Know

[Music] hi everybody this is Steven Brooke and welcome to my channel you know how in Star Trek there was a prime directive that you weren't supposed to mess with other people's cultures and all there's a prime directive in architectural photography when you look at the history of the depiction of architecture and look at great painters like Vermeer and Duke and Sandra Tom look at great engravers like Canaletto and Pyrenees II even contemporary artists such as hopper and de Carrico who featured architecture in their subject matter you notice that there is one principle that they all follow and that's the prime directive for architectural photography it's the one element that separates good architectural photography from all the rest and that is that the verticals remain parallel to the picture plane that the verticals in your shot do not look like this now back in the days of film that was so it's such an important aspect of architectural photography that it required an instrument like this a view camera to be able to do that and here's how this worked the building is here this is the film plane and if you've leveled your camera and you couldn't see the top of the building you didn't have to tip your camera up and throw the verticals out of alignment what you did was simply raise the the lens plane to be able to see the top of the image so that the building the lens and the film plane all remained parallel to one another so there was no distortion no parallax that you had to correct it had to be done in camera now anybody who's trained with a view camera will tell you that it is great practice because it required tremendous precision now you could do the same kind of work back then with a 35 millimeter that had what's called a perspective control lens and it would basically do the same thing that the view camera did it would raise the lens and keep the building plane and the film plane parallel to one another the problem is that the 35 millimeter camera produced a piece of film this big but the view camera produced a four by five inch sheet of film which was the industry standard for reproduction now this was a romantic kind of thing to do these were beautiful cameras now with digital I wouldn't go back to film on a bet the lenses are terrific the sensors are highly highly resolved you can get hundred and twenty-five megabyte files so the quality that you would have needed for a view camera you can now get with a 35-millimeter camera so you could either have a perspective control or you can use a 35-millimeter camera and if you can't see the top of your building you can tip the camera up but if you do that you have to make the correction in Photoshop to get the verticals back parallel to the picture plane that is the prime directive for architectural photography so let's go on the computer and take a look at how to easily correct the verticals and make it look like a professional architectural photo okay so we're back in the studio and let's take a look at the three pictures that we took outside under the three different conditions the first is where we had the camera level but we couldn't see the top of the building the second situation is where I had my perspective control lens and I was able to shift the lens so that the building and the sensor plane remained parallel to one another and as you can see the verticals are parallel to the picture plane but if you don't have one of these and you can't back up you don't want to do a vertical then what you have is this situation where as you can see the verticals are not properly aligned this has to be fixed now before I do that let me say that when you have to tip your camera back try as much as you can to get the horizontals parallel to the picture plane as well so that when you have to tip your camera you're only changing this for the verticals the horizontals remain the same now I have done this so that the horizontals are not perfect to actually show you some other manipulation that you have to make but the first thing you want to do is to fix these verticals so what I'm going to do is I'm going to either do control a or command a to select the whole picture then get rulers showing so that you can take your cursor and you can pull it into the picture and establish a vertical and let's take one to the other side now you want to do it as far to the side of the building as possible not in the middle so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna go to image I'm sorry edit transform distort and I'm going to get a little handle up in the corner and I'm gonna pull this over until I see that the verticals that the vertical is parallel to my guideline now I'm going to go to the other side and I'm going to pull that one over as well now as I do that two things are going to happen and we will fix them as I pull this over you can see that now this side is off so I need to go back and forth until both sides are perfectly rectified we will deal with this horizontal in a bit so it may take more than one pull now people do ask why don't I do edit transform and do effective which will pull both sides at the same time chances are when you made your shot you were maybe not perfectly aligned with your building so if you do that you're going to end up having to fix one relative to the other so that's why I do them individually so I'm going to get this right now as close as we can and remember this is an absolute the verticals are parallel to the picture plane or they're not and again this is the prime directive it's the one thing that separates good architectural photography from architectural photography that isn't very good so when I have the verticals properly aligned I will hit OK or return and it will make the correction and Photoshop and when you think about it the ability to do this in Photoshop means you don't have to use a big view camera and then over here in my history I want you to see the difference here's where I've opened this is where I started and now here's where I end up so one thing I want you to notice and I'm gonna toggle back and forth is when you look at the original proportion of the building when I make the correction on the verticals it squashes the building down which means I have to make one more manipulation to get the building right so I'm going to deselect that's control or command D reselect again go to edit transform distort and what I'm going to do is I'm going to re-establish the proper height of the building I think that's very close to correct and here's how I'm going to check even though the original photograph the verticals were out of alignment I can go back and look and see that I've met now with this last manipulation I've maintained the proper proportion on the building so now I'm going to deselect and I'm going to reselect and I have to deal with the horizontals and I'm going to deal with them exactly the same way I'm gonna bring a guide down here and I'm gonna bring a guide here to make sure that the building itself is perfectly on axis so I'm gonna go to edit transform distort and here I'm gonna pull from the bottom and I'm gonna get the horizontals properly aligned and in a later video we're gonna talk about how important axial compositions are especially with wide-angle lenses and biaxial I mean that the main horizontals are parallel to the picture plane this is one of the paradigms of Dutch painting and engraving so I'm gonna make that final correction on the horizontals and Here I am okay I'm gonna hit return I'm gonna deselect I'm gonna go to view clear the guides and when I did that I came in a little so I'm just gonna crop this tiny little bit off the side here and so here's where I started let's go back again I'm gonna we started here verticals are out of alignment horizontal is out of alignment so after we did the manipulations now I have a photograph that's a proper architectural photograph no I haven't tweaked the colors I haven't tweaked anything I just want to show you the manipulation that you have to make to make your photographs proper professional-looking architectural photos here's an example where the verticals are properly aligned but the horizontals are not those would have to be corrected this is another example this is at Lincoln Center in New York City again because of the situation I had to throw my verticals out of alignment but I've kept the horizontals parallel to the picture plane so that I have now a properly rectified image verticals are parallel to the picture plane horizontals are let me point out that when I make this correction I am looking over here on the far right and on the far left to make these Corrections I'm not looking at the verticals here if I make the corrections here I'm not going to really get it right I need to correct from the furthest verticals that I can actually deal with and also because I know I'm going to have to make this correction I include a lot more material than I'm going to end up with and I'm thinking about this when I make my shot that this is my key building these are just support structures as well as the stairs and then when I make my Corrections I will lose some of that but it's not important information my important information is this particular building so again remember just like in Star Trek with the prime directive the prime directive for architectural photography the thing that separates professional-quality architectural photography from everything else is that the verticals are parallel to the picture plane [Music] you [Music]

Channel: steven brooke

Views: 39,024

Keywords: Architectural Photography, Composition, Steven Brooke, architectural, architectural photographer, Architectural Photography and Composition, e-book, stevenbrookephotography, photography, photo, camera, lesson, class, masterclass, Architecural design, art history, Paralax, view camera, principles, canon, Nikon, Sony, lens, tiltshift, film, film plane, building, buildings, image, parallel, percision, 35mm, perspective, digital photography, 4K, photographing architecture

Id: Y9909XEBukk

Length: 12min 29sec (749 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 04 2019