modern landscape design ideas pictures
hi, i'm doug mckinlay and you're watching adoramatv. for today's segment we're looking at architecturalphotography, were here among high rises of london's financial district in the city oflondon, and using these great structures as oursubjects. adoramatv presents, stay focused withdoug mckinlay. architecture is a really big topic encompassingeverything from modern glass towers like the gherkin behind me, to kids sandcastles onthe beach, every urban setting no matter where you are in the world there is tons of structures, many right for goodpictures but despite this diversity
there are some really cool tricks and tips that photographers can employ to tame this architectural beast. this is what i love about modern architectural photography, these buildingsaren't just buildings, they're sculptures and londoners have a really uniquetalent for naming their buildings. if you look in the far distance, that's called the walkie talkie and then one behind me now, the inside out building, is a lloyd's of london building, acrosshere this funny shaped one is called the cheese grater, and a black monolith,i have no idea what it's called but
we're going to call it darth vader's home, of course the one, thefunny-looking one in the distance there is the gherkin, because it looks like a pickle, it's fantastic! what is the correct lens for architecturalphotography? well the cryptic answer is, how long is a piece of string?personally i favor the short zooms, the short prime lenses, but also i use the longerones as well, the 70-200mm, and even a 300mm, but if you're really going to get serious aboutdoing architectural photography the go to tool is a tilt-shift lens, or a t.s.lens,
but because they cost more than yourfirstborn few of us have money to buy them so what we're going to do today is we're going to look at lenses that people will mostlikely have in their camera bag. for instance the 24 mm f/1.4 lens, it's a great lens, the 16-35mm zoom lens, the 24-70mm zoom lens, these are all reallygood lenses for architectural photography even the bigger lenses, the 70-200mmand sometimes 300mm as well, it's buried under my stuff here. with allthese lenses
they come in handy, they do their job atdifferent times, one of the things we have to worry about withwith architectural photography of course is the distortion problem, especially if you're using ashort lens if you fall back a little bit, stand backfrom your short lens, and take some pictures of your buildings oftentimes it looks like the buildings are fallingover and we can fix on the computer in lightroom or photoshop but ifyou're going to do that make sure you've got enough room above and below your subject because when you straighten it out on the computerit tends to crop it in a little bit.
now, longer lenses are fantastic for detailswhen you're standing back and you want to get pictures say of a row ofwindows or something so every tool for the right job when you'reusing these short lenses, get in close to the building and shootstraight up, this way the distortion works in your favor and don't be afraid to kick your cameras off infunny angles, you never know what you're going to get. one of the first things i look for wheni'm doing city pictures is the direction of light it can affect the color, the shadows,
the textures and the reflections. digital photography is immediate, we see our results withinseconds after pressing the button this is a fantastic tool when doing city pictures, we canfine-tune our composition, fine-tune our exposure, we can evencheck out to see which lenses work and which ones don't. so make sure you take advantage of thesetools and move around don't be stuck in the same spot the whole time.
so we've just stumbled onto a pretty interesting picture in my opinion,so in front of me is the leadenhall market which is a victorian building and behind that is thebuilding they call the walkie talkie, one of the newest buildings in london, so i'm just going to go ahead and get a couple of pictures of it. i just love the juxtaposition of the oldand new. sometimes when i'm doing architectural pictures i find it a little bit difficult becausei don't know really where to start the surroundings can be reallyoverwhelming at times,
but if i spent about half an hour so just takingdetailed pictures and just let all of those surroundings kind of soak in, and get used to where i am it just tends to be a little bit easier, and then islowly move my way into the bigger pictures. so don't discount the little bits of stuff that are around you when you're looking at architectural pictures. apart from the aesthetic considerations of your pictures there is a few technical things we need to thinkabout, stabilization is first we need to use a good tripod. we're here at ledenhall market we're going to try get this picture behind me but i need to get the camera on a tripod.
even if there's enough light to handhold the camera i still suggest you use the tripod, it justreally helps to lock in the composition. think about your iso'sas well, if you're handheld they've got to be higher in order to get the shutter speed, if you're on a tripod you keep them at one hundred. the auto whitebalance is fine you can adjust in a computer if you needto, and with the architectural pictures some of the filters workreally well too, graduated neutral density filters, standard neutral density filters and polarizingfilters are all really handy tools
when it comes architecture photography. architectural photography is more or less landscape photography so we have to think about the rules, the rules of thirds and linear lines. probablylinear lines is probably the most important tool element to think about when doinglandscape photography. so with this picture for instance we've got the sides of the leadenhall market drawing our viewer into the picture,we're using the linear lines in the building to help us bring our viewer intothe picture and make them engage. just quickly on this one i've set the
mirror to lock up and the timer to twoseconds that we we reduce any chance ofcamera shake. as for compositions i like to think of the concept of kiss; keepit simple stupid, keep your composition simple do not over complicate them,they just won't work right, nice and simple. one of my favorite personal picturesof architecture was one i did just a week or two ago, i was down ingreenwich on a
nice evening and i managed this long shot with a long lens of canary wharf and the 02 arena and you can see the red line of the new emiratescable car going across the river, and in front, in the foreground there was an old dock or an old wharf and just the way it sort ofshaped and the way the sort if light was falling on it it was just a really nice image. by no means is this a definitive video on architectural photography i just want to inspirepeople to get out in their cities,
explore and get some great pictures alongthe way. remember to take your time and think about color and black-and-whiteit's very versatile. so that's it from me, i'm doug mckinlay for adoramatv don't forget to subscribe to adoramatvfor more great tips and tricks, and do tell us what you think, like,comment or share on this video and stop by the adorama learning center for moregreat tips and tricks, and don't forget to look up! do you want great-looking prints at low-cost? be sureto visit our easy to use, online printing service.
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