Indoor architecture photography
6 Helpful Tips for Doing Interior Architecture Photography
A Post By: Jeb Buchman
Shooting interior architecture photography can be challenging to get just right. Here are six tips to help you have more success with this type of photography.
21mm focal length, f/11, ISO 100, 1/200th. One off-camera flash used.
1) Always use a tripod
There are two main reasons why you always want to use a tripod for architecture photography.
First, a tripod will perfectly stabilize your camera/lens setup, which fully mitigates any possibility of motion blur from hand-holding the camera. Additionally, if you’re on a tripod, it’s much easier to make sure your camera is level (I’ll discuss the importance of a level camera later in this article).
Secondly, there’s no good reason NOT to use a tripod (I follow the general rule that, unless there’s a good reason not to have a tripod, I always use one). If you were tracking subjects which required quick movement and recomposition, then a tripod would be a hindrance. But, for architecture photography, your composition will always sit nice and still for you, giving you all the time in the world to set the shot up right. The ideal situation for a tripod.
21mm focal length, f/11, ISO 100, 1/120th. One off-camera flash used.
2) Whenever possible, use a flash
If you shoot a room indoors without a flash, you will typically get shadows scattered around the room. Using a flash for interior architecture will help balance the exposure across the entire frame.
This is how I typically use a flash. Put the flash on a tripod or a stand, and place it a few feet away from the camera (on each side of the camera if you use two flashes for larger rooms), and a foot or so behind the camera. Aim the flashes so they are pointing up at the ceiling, but also slightly away from the room you’re shooting. At this angle, the light from the flashes will illuminate the room indirectly (i.e. bouncing off the ceiling and walls), creating a soft, even, fill-in light for the room you’re shooting.
Set the flashes manually at half power (one stop below full power) and fire away!
This was a tricky shot because my flash was reflecting off the windows no matter where I positioned it. So I took two shots (one with flash and one without) and masked them together in Photoshop. The windows you see in this image are from the shot without a flash, while the rest of the room is from the shot with the flash.
3) When shooting whole rooms, don’t get too wide
When I first started taking practice photos of architectural photography, I used the widest angle lens I could get my hands on to shoot entire rooms. My thinking was that with an ultra-wide lens, I could get more of the room in the frame. But more isn’t always better. I quickly noticed the high level of distortion towards the edges of the frame, especially in smaller rooms where the edges of the frame were at wide angles to the camera.
So, I experimented with different focal lengths and came to the conclusion that between 21mm and 28mm gives you the most practical balance between limited distortion and a wide enough frame to capture the character and presence of the scene.
Ultra-wide lenses (i.e. 14 or 15mm) will make the sides of the frame look oddly stretched and off the horizontal plane, even when corrected in post-production.
If you’re in a situation where 21mm won’t capture enough of the scene, a panorama is always an option – which segues nicely into the next tip:
This was an extremely dark room, even with all the lights on. So, like the previous image, I stacked two shots: one exposed for the room, and one exposed for the windows, and combined them in Photoshop.
4) Try panoramas for ultra-wide shots
Set up your camera vertically on the tripod (which creates a taller pano). Then, making sure you adequately overlap the scene in each shot, do your best to make the camera rotate on a perfectly level, horizontal plane, with the pivot point being roughly where the lens meets the camera.
If the pivot point is too far forward (i.e. somewhere on the lens), or too far backward (i.e. on the body of the camera), the panorama will appear distorted.
For example, in the picture below, the pivot point was on the body of the camera (behind the ideal spot where the lens meets the camera). As a result, the panorama has a weird sort of convex distortion.
This is a seven image panorama. See how artificially “rounded” the walls are? This will happen when shooting a panorama if your camera/lens are not properly situated on the tripod.
5) Whenever possible, try to shoot only one or two walls
Two wall shots typically give the viewer the most geometrically pleasant image to view. When three (or more) walls are introduced, the photograph can have a tendency to appear somewhat awkward-looking if you aren’t careful with the composition.
21mm focal length, f/11, ISO 100, 1/120th. One off-camera flash used.
The above shot is a generic two-wall scene, with the walls meeting at a standard 90 degree angle. The image below is the same room, except I backed up several feet to purposely include the third wall on the left edge of the frame.
The “third wall” on the left side of this shot creates an unnatural and visually-displeasing scene.
I don’t know about you, but to me, the photo above looks compositionally awkward and disorienting because of the third wall on the left. All of that said, just like the Rule of Thirds can occasionally be broken to make a photo work, sometimes getting three walls in the shot is okay – provided everything is geometrically aligned.
A properly-aligned three-wall shot. 21mm focal length, f/11, ISO 100, 1/200th.
6) Make sure your camera is perfectly level
Last, but definitely not least, you will want to make sure your camera isn’t tilted up or down, or tilted to the left or right. Doing so, even slightly, will require post-production cleanup. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
In this shot, the camera/lens were not level on the tripod. They were slightly slanted down towards the ground, creating the artificially slanted walls.
See how slanted the windows are? Clearly, this is not an accurate depiction of the room, it’s the result of the camera being tilted ever-so-slightly down. Now, see what a difference makes if we get the camera nice and level.
Camera/lens properly level on the tripod. 21mm focal length, f/8, ISO 100, 1/120th. No flash (this room had plenty of sunlight to illuminate it without artificial help).
Being level makes a HUGE difference. There are several ways to help you get the camera perfectly level when you compose your shot. Most cameras these days have a built-in level, so when you look into the viewfinder, there are lines across the focusing screen that will tilt when the camera tilts. When these lines are level, you know the camera is level.
You can also use a bubble level that slides onto the camera’s hot shoe. When the little bubble is centered, the camera is level. You can buy a hot shoe bubble level at any photography store for just a few bucks. I use a bubble level because they tend to be more accurate than the lines inside the viewfinder.
In this shot, I used Photoshop to remove the camera, lens, and tripod, which were all reflected in the mirror. Sometimes shooting into a mirror is inevitable, and when you do, cloning in Photoshop is a requirement.
Conclusion
As is the case with any type of photography, the most important aspect of getting the shot right is to take your time, and make sure your composition and exposure are exactly what you want. One good thing about architectural photography is that the composition and subject will never move (unless you move it), so there’s no need to rush the photograph.
Read more from our Tips & Tutorials category
Jeb Buchman
is a self-taught, professional real estate and architectural photographer based in Baltimore, Maryland. Although he spends his days photographing the interiors of homes and buildings, he spends his free time in the outdoors, capturing the natural beauty of landscapes and waterscapes he discovers along the way.
6 Interior Photography Tips from an Architectural Photographer
Living
Mindful Living
by Ashley Abramson
published Nov 4, 2019
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Whether you’re capturing images for your Instagram grid or you’re an aspiring photographer, taking photos of your home is a rewarding way to express and share your personal aesthetic. But no matter how amazing your home looks (or how fancy your camera is), there’s a bit of a learning curve to snapping stunning interior photos. What gear is most important? What’s the best way to edit? What’s the most flattering angle?
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According to photographer Alyssa Rosenheck, the first thing to know is that the process of photography is more about storytelling than gear, editing, or composition.
To get the most out of your home photography, Rosenheck says it’s important to rely just as much on intention and intuition as technical skills. Ready to up your interior photo game? Here’s her best advice.
Define your personal “lens”
Defining a vision for your photography is the first step to making sure you take photos that feel like “you” and really capture your style. Before you pick up your camera, Rosenheck recommends taking time to set an intention through your own personal and emotional lens. Your home is your personal space—the place where you love and find inspiration—so carve out some reflection time to figure out your photo goals.
Get a great editing app
Even if you have a proper camera, your smart phone can be a useful tool for creating, capturing, and sharing meaningful content. “iPhone’s camera and video are sophisticated, and with the help of a few reliable apps, anyone can create images that rival the ones I produce for magazines,” Rosenheck says.
Her current favorite app for editing is A Color Story, which is available in the App Store and on Google Play. “They have incredible filter selections that I use for portraits,” she says. “And as for spaces, I bypass the filters and only adjust the exposure, contrast, and even out the color temperature.”
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Photograph in natural light
Rosenheck says natural light (as opposed to overhead lighting or lamps) is essential for capturing the most accurate representation of a room—that’s why whenever she starts a shoot, she flips off all the light switches in the home. “It may be counterintuitive, but natural light yields the most accurate representation of the room’s color and all the beauty within it,” she says.
Use a tripod
Investing in a simple tripod for your DSLR or an attachment for your smart phone is the most reliable way to ensure straight lines. “A classic rookie mistake is expecting superstar results from holding the camera by hand when shooting home interiors and architecture,” Rosenheck says.
“My goal is for the viewer to experience a sense of relief with my images, and when the lines are off, this results in visual tension and the viewer’s eye immediately focuses on the crooked lines.”
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Be a straight shooter
It’s fun to play with angles, but Rosenheck says the most crisp and clean images are shot straight-on. So rather than snapping an overhead photo of your kitchen, aim for a straightforward shot. “Overly complicated angles result in fussy images and confusing focal points,” she says. “If you want to play around with angles, I suggest letting these be closer detail shots.”
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Keep composition simple
At the end of the day, composition—what’s actually in the photo—is far more important than the camera you have in your hand. “Composition enables the space’s story to be told through object arrangement and placement,” Rosenheck says.
“I can communicate a particular object of interest through my focal point, or, alternatively, I can introduce a moment of relief by emphasizing the negative space.”
While there are numerous theories behind composition, Rosenheck recommends photographers focus on three things: achieve straight lines, balancing your layers, and letting the rule of thirds guide your lens.
Architecture in the mirror of photography
Vlast together with Archcode Almaty continues a series of informative lectures on architecture. Well-known architectural photographer Yuri Palmin visited Almaty. At the request of Archcode Almaty and the Government, he met with photographers and subscribers of our site and gave a concise course in architectural photography.
Video recording of the lecture:
Full transcript of the lecture:
I am happy to be here, in your city, and to be engaged in a large project dedicated to the architecture of Almaty, and specifically to the period of post-war Soviet modernism.
I am Yuri Palmin, an architectural photographer, I have been doing this for almost 30 years. It's time to somehow change the occupation, I've been doing this too much already somehow. In principle, this is the only thing I know how to do and therefore I will talk to you about it. I very much hope that our meeting today can be of benefit to all of us. I think to build tonight like this: I will make an introduction, which I will try to keep as short as possible. Please forgive me if it drags on. In fact, this is a squeezed course in architectural photography, which I only read three classes, and then take credit for it. Of course, today I will not torment you with either one or the other, I will try to make this introduction as short as possible, because I think that this story is the history of history, it is extremely important for a general understanding of what I do and what I think can be done by a person who consciously photographs architecture today. The fact is that architectural photography, like architecture, is now going through difficult times.
And photography in general. nine0003
Yuri Palmin - architectural photographer, teacher of the program "Photography. Basic course" at the British Higher School of Design. Collaborates with such popular and professional publications as AD Magazine, Vogue, World Architecture, RIBA Journal, Icon Magazine, Domus, Abitare, Speech, EXIT, Mark Magazine, Project Russia
We live in an age full of images. Images rain down on us from everywhere, we choke on them, sometimes we wish there were a little less of them. If earlier there were special people - photographers who delivered visual information to the consumer of this information, now there is no such separation, photographers - everyone. And I do not think that after some time it will be possible to talk about professional and non-professional photographers, the situation will change. But we can talk about people who are engaged in the acquisition and delivery of such visual information consciously, as professionals. Maybe they should be called non-photographers.
Here is a short introduction about how the history of photography is connected with the history of architecture, how the profession arose in general. Then I will show a couple of my projects. In the first part of my photos will not be, they are not included in the history of architectural photography. nine0003
Architectural photography begins at the same time photography begins. Or rather, when photography ceases to be such a fair trick, a miracle, and becomes a rather ordinary human activity. This takes place in the middle of the 19th century.
Architecture is a very tasty subject for photography, especially for early photography. It is clear why. Firstly, because the architecture does not move and we can shoot with long exposures, so we do not need to clamp a person in a special vise, as when portraiture, so that he does not move during a four-minute exposure. Secondly, which is very important, architecture is an undoubted value. That is, when shooting an architectural monument, we convey visual information about a deliberately valuable object, this is very important.
In addition, at the same time, the architectural profession also begins to undergo changes related to the fact that engineering penetrates into architecture, they begin to connect. We know that the middle of the 19th century is the era of technically new architecture, and it is also the era of the beginning of conscious urbanism, which, of course, is associated primarily with the changes that the mayor of Paris, Baron Haussmann, has been making in Paris since the early 40s 19th century and beyond. And at the same time, the Paris Geographical Society was founded in Paris, this is the first team of architectural photographers who work under the guidance of Eduard Baldus - in fact, the founder of the profession. These people work on behalf of the city authorities, they fix the city, which is going through the most serious changes that have ever happened to the city in a short time in general in the history of the urbanist. These are not gradual, not natural changes, but changes, one might say, violent ones.
Therefore, firstly, the city must be fixed. Secondly, it is necessary to compile a list of city objects that constitute its unconditional value. nine0003
Looking at these photographs, we can see that there was a set of instructions for shooting architecture. First, the architecture should be filmed – if possible, facades should be filmed frontally. Sunlight should fall on the facades in such a way as to bring out the textures and architectural details of the facades as much as possible, that is, as a rule, it is light that falls at an angle of approximately 45 degrees, and all geometric distortions - this is the most important thing in architectural photography, for all her story. This is such a small technical detail that says a lot about our profession. As you can see, in these photos, all vertical parallels are parallel. nine0023
Usually when we walk around with a phone or a camera with a wide angle lens, when we look up, you know that the vertical parallels collapse, and we are already used to it actually.
Moreover, by tilting the camera, we get an image that does not match the way we see it. While when we look at architecture with our eyes, or rather not only with our eyes, but also with our brain, we are constantly correcting the vertical perspective based on the data that we receive from our vestibular apparatus. We know how much we have bowed our heads, and we know how much we need to correct this distortion. Such a correction in technical photography is very simple. The camera of the mid-19th century has independent lens and film boards, so we can move the lens parallel to the film, as if lowering the horizon and keeping the vertical parallel. This is what shift lenses do now. Then all the lenses were shift. And this is also one of the instructions: this is the maximum frontality and light that emphasizes the details as much as possible. nine0003
The most interesting thing is that at the same time, the same Eduard Baldus was developing a technique that is now used in the digital process just everywhere.
This is a sticker. It was impossible to photograph such an interior with lenses of that time, they were not wide enough. Therefore, the photograph is taken in fragments. Then these fragments - the negatives are cut out, glued together, all this is natural, done by hand, all this is done on glass plates and then a composite image is printed from them. nine0003
This digital technique was invented then, in the middle of the 19th century.
I immediately jump, as it were, to such descendants of Baldus and French photographers - Marcus Brunetti, this German photographer, who is famous for taking 42 photographs in 9 years and his entire product of nine years of creativity, extremely intense, these are 42 photographs of the facades of Europe. Here are the photos.
We see that they are somehow similar to what the French shot, but if we look closely at them, we will see that in fact it is impossible to take such a photo.
Because the angles under which specific details of the facades are visible are actually taken from different points. Our eye wants to see it that way. In fact, looking at this facade, we, our brain, see something like this, but we will never be able to take a picture like that. Only using a very complex technique that Marcus Brunetti uses, namely, this facade, this photograph, consists of about one and a half thousand pieces, taken with a very long-focus lens from different points of the city and then corrected and glued together. This is approximately what Baldus did, only much more complicated. nine0003
Shooting each picture can actually take several years, because we know that we come to Paris, and there, at the Notre Dame Cathedral, one tower must be restored, the same with the Cologne Cathedral. Accordingly, Brunetti returns to the same place, he, of course, has everything written down. He comes back, makes the appropriate takes and then sews the fruit of this many years of work into pictures like this.
It is also remarkable here that the architects of the buildings did not even see such a facade, because, as a rule, the creation of the facade of a Gothic or Renaissance cathedral took not a single generation. The architect could draw it, but he couldn't see it because he was dying by the time half the job was done. Another of the undisputed successors of this technical school of architectural photography are my very favorite respected artists, both unfortunately now deceased, Brand and Hila Becher, the founders of the Düsseldorf school of photography. nine0003
They went a little further, they used this rather simple technique, that is, strict frontal shooting of various architectural objects, with a format camera, all this was filmed on a format of 8 by 10 inches.
All this was filmed in cloudy weather. In one weather, one lens and they are famous for a series of objects that have actually entered the treasury of modern art. That is, they transferred the same technical photography to contemporary art and founded a school of artistic photography in Düsseldorf.
Of their students, the very famous Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruf, Andreas Gursky, the author of the most expensive photograph in the world "Rhine II" for $ 4.5 million, the price of which is actually part of the work, but this is already more complicated, this is part of a separate lecture. nine0003
These photographers also used such sets of instructions to create series and approached the shooting process technically, for example, this is the famous Struth series - "Streets", they shot deserted streets after dawn in different parts of the globe. And all his streets are like this, they are deserted, they lack scale, which is very important. And there is no person in them, and I will talk about the presence of a person in architectural photography a little later. This is one of the most radical architectural photographs the world has ever seen. This is a photograph of the warehouse of the Ricola confectionery factory in Switzerland. nine0003
Herzog & de Meuron is one of the most famous architectural firms.
You have probably seen one of their latest projects - Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. This is one of the largest in general and the most expensive works of architecture of recent times.
The second figure opposite to Baldus, who, as we see, founded a lot of things, is Eugene Atget - a figure extremely important in the history of art and culture in general.
nine0002 He is also from Paris, worked only in Paris, photographed only Paris, he is one of those whom Baudelaire called flaneurs at the end of the 19th century. It is clear that the concept of "flaneur" then, through Walter Benjamin and later, through the situationists of the 60s, became one of the fundamental concepts of the new left urban culture. A flaneur is a person who can get lost in his own city. A flaner is a person who walks around the city without knowing where, and who is not interested in the goal, but in the movement itself. A flaner is, as it were, such an arrow, a measuring device that measures the city with itself, with its subtle nerves, with its subtle feelings.
nine0003 Haussmann's reforms led to the formation of the Paris Geographical Society, Eugene Atget lives in Paris and hates Haussmann, he just can't stand it... For him, these urban reforms are cutting into the fabric of the city, which he subtly feels, and to which he treats very personally, intimately .
Walter Benjamin says that Atget's photographs are crime scene photographs, where you see, people sometimes appear with him. But these people are not a scale, and not living characters, but an organic part of the very connection of the city with which Atget is connected by his nerves. Unfortunately, according to already verified information, Atget did not move around the city like the arrows of a measuring device, but drew the city into squares and planned his walks. And this romantic veil of flanking, unfortunately, we must admit, the history of art removed from him. Then we move on chronologically. nine0003
Atget's followers are romantic photographers, photographers for whom a work of architecture is not an object to be captured, but a part of some inner world that they capture by photographing the outside world.
Then the 20th century begins. Interesting developments begin to occur, partly due to the technical changes taking place in photography itself. Photography is becoming very popular. Special skills and abilities are not needed in order to produce high-quality prints. nine0003
Albert Renger-Patch is one of the leaders and founders of the New Objectivity movement in Germany in the 1920s. And his main contribution to architectural photography is that it is Renger-Patch who introduces everyday life into everyday life and into the discourse of architectural photography. That is, he shoots both architectural monuments and city views as monuments.
In this case, this embankment is, as it were, shot in the right light, it is certainly taken in compliance with all the canons of architectural photography, but we cannot say what is shot here: the bell tower, or the facades of houses, or the fences that are in the foreground. because everything is here. It is like an urban environment that is not divided into separate objects for him.
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He goes even further and begins to photograph industrial facilities, showing the beauty of industrial facilities, which for him is equated with the beauty of architectural monuments. For him, for example, Gothic arches are as significant as, for example, photographs of nature.
At the end of the 1920s, he released a book that he wanted to call simply “Things”, but at the insistence of the publisher, the title was changed to “The World is Beautiful” and the meaning of the book, the project, was that all the things seen by the camera, this is very important - they become beautiful. Here's the thing. When we look at the world, in general, when we look at something, we think about what we see, we constantly run this visual information through a huge number of filters. We have already said that we correct, for example, the convergence of vertical parallels absolutely unconsciously. But in addition to such simple physiological filters, we also have cultural filters - everyone has their own.
We know that, for example, a five-story building from the 60s is a less valuable object than a Gothic cathedral, not to mention a nine-story building from the 70s. What do people tell us who took a camera in these very 20s in Germany? They say that photographic technology does not have such filters. Yes, it is soulless, but at the same time, it is deprived of this constant reconciliation or something, with the standards and criteria that culture has brought to us. And this remarkable property of technology opens up the world to us in a new way. That is, to look at the world more honestly than we see it with our eyes and brain. nine0003
And, of course, then we have the Bauhaus (educational institution - note V) and one of the key figures of the new photography of the 20-30s, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who was one of the founders of the Bauhaus, held very important posts there , and was also a photography theorist of the new visuality. What's going on here? An angle appears in the photo, the camera starts tilting up and down, it starts to mow, create an oblique, just turn around its axis in such a way that our verticals become diagonals.
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She starts doing things that the photographer simply couldn't afford before or that was a mistake. The camera moved off the tripod and took such a picture. Why did this become possible? Actually there are several explanations. The first explanation: the new materiality has opened up this very new sincerity of photographic technique.
And the second: there were cameras working with a narrow film. And in fact there has been a revolution that I believe is more serious in photographic technology than the advent of digital. Because a person began to understand that each frame is not a photographic plate, which needs to be developed separately, there you can buy, charge, carry with you a limited number of these same sheets, because this is weight, a video appeared in which 36 frames, in principle, you can shoot There are 10 of these rollers. Stuff yourself a wardrobe trunk and shoot for your pleasure and experiment. And with that, the tripod fell off.
Dropping a tripod is like dropping a monkey's tail, and it has led to a huge change in photographic aesthetics. Here are, for example, radical downward angles. You can't just set up a tripod with a big camera. Curiously, the love of angles and the craze for this new aesthetic has suddenly begun to give way to the much stricter and newer rules that are emerging in architectural photography. I am now skipping a whole stage and moving on to the man who shaped modern architectural photography in the second half of the 20th century. This is Lucien Herve. nine0023
This is Le Corbusier's personal photographer. It is known that Le Corbusier is the only architect who has never photographed. Actually it is not. Now there is a book of photographs by Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier shot from about 1907 to 1915, and he shot everything, after which he wrote that I was one of those fools who bought a cheap Kodak camera and spent crazy money on film, and only after 5 years I realized that photography - a fruitless occupation and completely unnecessary for an architect, and then I threw out this camera and picked up a pencil.
But somehow Le Corbusier still needed to fix his architecture, and this tandem developed here. The best photographs of Le Corbusier were taken by Lucien Hervé. What's great about these photos? Look, architecture ceases to be a monument, ceases to be an object that has a top / bottom, right / left, which must be framed and completely placed in the frame. nine0003
The value of the fragment in this case is not the same value as the capital or any other architectural detail in the old photograph when the fragments were taken. Architecture here becomes, as it were, an object that can be explored just like you can explore the world with a camera. It ceases to be an integral discrete object, and here Le Corbusier and Hervé understand each other very well, and here it is necessary to make a separate lecture for many hours, because this is a very interesting topic. Now dissertations are being written about this. What is important is that it is in Lucien Hervé's photography that finally appears what architectural photographers use all the time now - photographers are starting to use radically oblique light.
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You see, here it is a concrete surface under a fur coat, you can cut yourself on it. This is due to the fact that the light goes obliquely through it. We see different textures of concrete, and here these textures form the main subject of photography. This tactility that appears in photography, it didn’t exist before, because before photography is such a picture, here is a house somewhere, on some other continent, so we photographed it, transferred it from America to Europe, showed it here and we seem to have a house, but we look at it. We have it somewhere in the future. Another of Baldus' rules was to shoot with as long a lens as possible, from as far away as possible. That is, to make the most impersonal presentation of a work of architecture. The longer our lens, the closer the picture is to axonometry. There can be no axonometric picture in a photograph, because we will always have perspective distortions. But axonometry is such a view of God, it is such a view of a completely detached observer.
And here architecture begins to be presented to us as something absolutely tactile and tangible. And this is the great merit of Lucien Herve. Then begins the era of commercial architectural photography, which in America is associated primarily with the names of Erza Stoller and Julias Shulman. nine0003
Here is the Guggenheim Museum, all such iconic photographs of iconic buildings. Note that the car in the foreground is here for a reason. It's not just parked here and it can't be removed, as often I'm haunted by such situations here, it's here on purpose, because this white surface works with Guggenheim's shapes and curves.
And Julias Shulman, who becomes such a singer of post-war American modernism. Because political, social, economic changes are taking place in society, which change housing and land prices, people come from the war, the demographic situation there is changing. In short, this whole story with the American home, it is undergoing changes. And such deliberately simple and minimalistic European modernism penetrates into America, which was previously rejected by American society.
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But photography is needed here in order to convey this new lifestyle and, in general, even somehow advertise for people. Perhaps this is the most famous architectural photograph, this is an exemplary house, specially built for filming, actually over Mulholland Drive.
Shulman took this photo for a very long time with an assistant, he was seating the girls. The point here is that for a person familiar with the culture of an American family home, this story is completely non-standard: the girls hang over the city, at night, in some kind of glass cube. We see that this unnatural situation is actually very beautiful. The city is separate, the house is separate. The lighting isn't perfect by today's standards, but... About Julius Shulman is the only architectural photographer to have a feature-length documentary called Visual Acoustics, with Dustin Hoffman narrating. nine0003
This is a very funny photograph of Shulman, which shows how much of an advertising character he is, how much we now see this shot done and set, especially when it is in color.
Everyone, let's move on to our time. Perhaps one of the most serious classic photographers who are now living and working actively is Ellen Binet.
I am happy to know her, for me she is just a living classic, a person who influenced me very much, but, unfortunately, now Ellen is possessed by very strong pessimistic feelings, sensations and views in general about what is happening with the architectural photography. nine0003
Helene Binet is a close friend of the architects she has worked with, which is very important. She was a very close friend of Zaha Hadid and that's why I think that Helen Binet's photographs of Zaha Hadid's work are much better than Zaha's architecture. She was very friendly and is friends with Peter Zumthor, I don’t think here ... there is parity here, let’s say so.
This is the photograph taken by everyone who finds himself in the small chapel of Brother Klaus by the architect Peter Zumthor near Cologne.
There is no public transport going there. This is such a special place where you have to walk 6 kilometers from the nearest railway station, this is very important, part of such an architectural experience. And this is a photograph that everyone who gets there takes. Each person raises the camera up, removes this drop - the window. This chapel is arranged in this way: Zumthor made a formwork from deadwood found by his students in the surrounding forest, such a hut was built, then it was used as a formwork for concrete, after which the trunks were set on fire and at a certain moment, when the concrete was just coming up, and the ashes mixed with the hardening concrete, and formed an absolutely amazing, unique texture of the interior decoration. After that, glass drops were still inserted there, which are like dew on this ashes. This is an amazingly subtle thing. Everyone takes such a photo, this photo can be shown on the screen, you can watch it on the Internet, but you will not see it.
It is remarkable in that it is filmed on a large format and it looks only in a print. I now mostly work with digital and I understand very well what I lose by not working with film. Here is Helene Binet, she is like one of the last real classical architectural photographers, she doesn’t even have a camera on her phone. For her, it is very important that she does not have a digital device for recording information. nine0003
This photo is the Columbus Museum, the Archbishop's Museum in Cologne, also by the architect Peter Zumthor, and this is a picture that you will never see with your eyes, because it is a reflection, it is a glare on the ceiling, such a hairy texture, glare from the sun reflecting from puddles, which is outside, behind this perforated wall. You will never see such a picture, because this is the result of a long exposure, again shooting on film. This is one of Zumthor's iconic photographs, one of his favorites. nine0003
Next comes such an era of close connection between contemporary art and architectural photography.
Hiroshi Sugimoto, the famous Japanese artist and photographer, shoots works of modern architecture, reducing sharpness very strongly. Thus, he, as it were, imitates this state of relaxed attention. A state at the edge of the field of view, such a side view of important architecture. On the one hand, this is important, but on the other hand, it is not drastic. nine0003
Such sharpness, unfortunately, happens only on large-format film, and you also need to look at it not on a small screen, but in a book or, even better, at an exhibition. And of course, the most important commercial figure in our profession now is Ivan Baan.
This is a Dutch architectural photographer who recently sold his last apartment and lives only in planes and hotels and travels all over the world and shoots everything that is starry and expensive. I say that he seems to be baptizing. Until he christened the building, it's like it doesn't exist. But then Baan arrived, who, like an angel, flies around the world, and the building began to exist.
This is a very important figure. nine0003
This is his photo of New York after Hurricane Sandy in November 2012, when half the city was without electricity. Baan at first thought to take a car, but it was impossible to get a car in New York these days, it was easier to rent a helicopter, cheaper than renting a car. I just remember, because at that time I was lying in Brooklyn with a terrible headache, and at that time a real photographer was flying in a helicopter and shooting architecture. He then held an auction and sold, I think, 20 copies for a huge amount of money, which went to the Sandy relief fund. Ivan Baan is an interesting character. nine0003
Because in fact, I have already said that it was customary to shoot architecture in the 80s and 90s without people at all. This is a deserted, dry architecture, like a thing in itself, beautiful, with some inner beauty, which has no scale, which you can’t understand whether it’s a piece of jewelry or a sculpture.
Such a picture captured the entire architectural press in the 80s and owned it until the middle of the 2000s. And in fact, Ivan Baan was one of those people who, taking all these lifeless wonderful pictures - he knows how to do it very well, made quite recently, somewhere in the middle of the 2000s, a real revolution. He began not just to shoot people in architecture, but began to drive people into architecture. nine0003
As I was told, when Ivan Baan comes to Herzog & de Meuron to shoot new architecture, all young architects are rounded up, they have to bring costumes with them, several shifts, he has a people assistant who checks the clothes, does the casting, and then these young architects portray from office workers to passers-by on the set of Baan.
Yes, that's how Ivan Baan shoots without people, Fondation Louis Vuitton, this is a classic architectural photograph that you don't have to sign. In principle, everyone shoots the same now. You know there's archdaily.com, the premier architecture media, and you actually rarely see an interesting personality in architecture photography there.
Basically, all the architecture there is also filmed according to the canons. nine0003
And this is a project in Caracas. What it is?
In a nutshell: this is a gigantic 40-something-story office building that was unfinished. It began to be built on the rise of the Venezuelan economy, which was in the late 90s, then it was abandoned, and then a terrible economic crisis began in Venezuela and the building was seized by the homeless. And this is a gigantic squat, which gradually formed its own economy, its own sociology. For example, they somehow forwarded electricity from neighboring lighting matches, but they didn’t have an elevator, but they had a ramp that went up to the 22nd floor and there were special indoor taxi elevators that carried people. Baan studied it from bottom to top, including some curiosities, for example, a grandmother who was raised to the 34th floor. She is paralyzed and everyone knows that her grandmother will never go down from the 34th floor, that she will live and die there.
They have their own shops and cafes there. Then Ivan Baan shoots this series in 2012, receives his Golden Lion, he and the band .... This is such a theoretical architectural research group, well, in general, close to the Archcode of Almaty, working all over the world, they get their Golden Lion, it becomes public, after that in 2014 this building becomes world famous, because Brody from the series is hiding there " Homeland. He gets there, it seems in the third season, the whole world learns about the building, after which the corrupt Venezuelan police find out about him, after which a terrible purge takes place using the army and everyone is expelled from there. And that's all, now this skeleton stands separately, behind barbed wire and no one lives there and there is no life there. Here is this strange story, in fact, architectural photography served as a catalyst for this whole story. nine0003
I'm bringing this up to the fact that now, at the present time, architectural photography is incomprehensible where.
On the one hand, it is made according to the orders of architects and is as close as possible to renderings - what does the architect want? The architect wants to show the public that the render he sold to the client can actually be photographed actually exists as a fact. This is a commissioned photo. Photography of historical architecture certainly remains in its niche. This is what I now prefer to do for the most part. And in fact, there is no critical photography - neither as a school, nor as an aesthetic. And whether there is a place for a photographer, whether there is a place for aesthetics, whether there is a place for a new language, is unknown. Therefore, this is where we started, we have already finished, only in a different way. This was my introduction, sorry for some confusion, to the history of architectural photography. nine0003
Now I will show my project. This is the first work that I did not commissioned by architects, but partly on my own initiative. This is the Chertanovo series, 1999, which was made for the exhibition of a series of exhibitions curated by the architect, artist Yuri Avvakumov, one of the founders of the paper architecture movement of the 80s.
It was a series of exhibitions called "24". There is still site 24. Photo, it has been preserved. By the way, Avvakumov and I did the design. It was such an idea of Avvakumov, a series of twenty-four exhibitions that opened every second Thursday of every month. There were 24 photographs in each exhibition, and they had to be authored by either an architecture photographer or an architect who shoots or an artist who also works with photography and architecture. And each of the invited authors was free to choose their own topic. nine0003
And just at that time I moved to Chertanovo, but not to Severnoye, this is an experimental area, an exemplary residential area, which was designed in the 70s in the workshop of Mikhail Posokin Sr. One of such rather important objects of post-war modernism for Moscow. It was built for a very long time and poorly, and it was built only in the early 80s. But all the same, some basic architectural ideas embedded in it, they are there. In particular, one of these ideas - he looks very close to the English brutalism of the 60s.
There ideas of the Smithsons are generally quite guilty even in this photo. For example, what is introduced artificial relief in the area. nine0003
For example, this hill, under which construction debris is buried. But this is a favorite slide of local children. Duplex apartments, artists' studios upstairs, by the way, artist-architects still work there. In general, this is a district that was planned as an exemplary communist one, by that time it was clear that the communism promised by Khrushchev in the 80s would not take place, and each family would not be given a separate apartment either. Yes, and in general with socialism there are small problems. But on the other hand, the idea was that it was possible to build separate areas that would be exemplary, such as enclaves of a new way of life. In particular, in northern Chertanovo, a vacuum waste disposal system, which was made by the Swedes, is still in operation. In general, everything is serious there. And it was even more serious.
For example, halls on the ground floors in all houses are non-residential. According to the initial projects, which were developed by sociologists together with architects, there were to be refrigerators in the halls, in which it was possible to leave a list of products to the concierge, people bought the products, and by the evening they lay in the refrigerator on the shelf of this tenant. But in fact, all this was built quite badly, the structure of separation of traffic flows and people, close to what Le Corbusier and Siam promoted, this horizontal stratification, has already stopped working at the construction stage. That is, part of the flow of cars was allowed above the ground instead of letting everything underground, so now it’s impossible to park there, it’s impossible to bring anything to the entrance, everything is forced by cars and there’s no way to fight it, because underground automobile communications are clogged. But I was struck by what I finally saw in this architecture… if it used to represent for me everything that I did not like in this past life, gray, Soviet, very miserable, and limited.
And architecture for me was like a sign of that life. Here I already began to travel around the world, began to look at what was happening in Europe in the 50s and 60s, and I suddenly began to understand that there is this connection and that it is necessary to talk about it. And it so happened that it was in the early 2000s that the architectural community and journalists first began to talk about post-war modernism, and this topic suddenly turned on, as it were. nine0003
Nikolai Malinin, my co-author of the book, attributes this to me. Actually it is not. I was in the right place at the right time and did the right thing. And so I made such a series about the existence of this area, unadorned, but at the same time somewhat romanticized in such a way. Curator Avvakumov then wrote in the water text for the exhibition that Brodsky said that if a neutron bomb is dropped on Leningrad, which destroys all life, leaves all the infrastructure, then Petersburg will remain. But Palmin proved that if a neutron bomb was dropped on Northern Chertanovo, then Northern Chertanovo would remain.
That's about such a heavenly Chertanovo, devoid of inhabitants, such a failed paradise, I made. In fact, this work is extremely important to me. And it was this work that prompted me to what I am doing now here, what I am trying to do in Moscow with architecture, as if deprived of public attention. I am very interested in the topic of consciously directing the flow of my attention, my vision, and not only my own, but through myself and other people, to what is deprived of this attention. nine0003
Architectural photography as a way of understanding the world | by Nikolay Pavlov | sl digest
The building of the Ministry of Highways of Georgia. photo: Georgia to seeFamous architect Yuri Palmin talks about the complex relationship between photographers and architecture over the past 165 years, and how photographs of buildings allow us to preserve and decipher the era code.
Architectural photography is considered to be, if not dying out, then at least a kind of photographic art that has faded into the background: after all, buildings are much easier to photograph than people.
But the simplicity of architectural photography is imaginary. Millions of amateur shots are able to perfectly convey the appearance of an object, create a photocopy of it, but in fact this is not a step forward, but backward. In his lecture, Yuri Palmin proves that the development of architectural photography since the middle of the 19th century has been a movement from simply copying the world to creating its unique image. A good architectural photograph is not so much about the building as it is about the society that created it, and at the same time about its time. nine0003
Indicative in this respect are early photographs from the 1860s, showing both new glass-roofed buildings and ruins. Despite the different objects, they carry the same message to the viewer: the expectation of a high-tech future. This future symbolizes not only the new style of architecture, but the ruins. The ruins embody not sadness, as it was in the era of romanticism, and not regret for the passing world, but joy: after all, the old was destroyed in order to build a new world.
Advances in technology have influenced not only the choice of subjects for shooting, but also the status of photographers. If at the end of the 19th century architectural photography was a professional field of activity, then with the improvement of the photography process, the number of amateur photographers began to increase. About a hundred years ago, the process of turning architects into photographers began. nine0003
One of the first architects to use the camera in their work was Corbusier. Many of his photographs of buildings and their fragments have been preserved: some served as an occasion for reflection, others inspired. As Palmin notes: “The advent of simple cameras and the simultaneous development of modernist thinking among architects is a remarkable turning point in the development of both the history of photography and the history of architecture.”
For a while, architecture and photography went hand in hand: architects built, photographers interpreted their creations.
The golden era of architectural photography was the era of modernism, when the photographer was a kind of co-author of the architect. And then postmodernism came, and architecture begins to be perceived as a text that cannot be photographed. The genre of photography is going around in circles, nothing new has happened since about 1970s to early 2000s. And then digital cameras appear - and it turns out that you can do without professional architectural photographers.
Yuri Palmin describes the current situation without bitterness, but also without rose-colored glasses.
Until recently, the number of architectural photographers in the world was several hundred, but with the advent of convenient digital cameras, the situation has changed. The best architectural photographers are architects, and if they have not done this before in such a volume, it is only due to technical difficulties. nine0023 When beautiful and not very expensive digital cameras appeared with excellent lenses, allowing, for example, to freely handle the horizon line, architects got a handy tool, and it turned out that they quite cope with those tasks that are not so easy for a professional architectural photographer deal.
