Thread: Taking pictures of popular structures with the right amount of light

You love to travel and capture buildings and monuments in different cities. Yet somehow your pictures lack that dash of professionalism. What looks extremely clear on the small camera display loses its effect when viewed on the computer.

A good camera alone does not suffice any more if you want to take good photos. Capturing architecture is especially difficult and requires a lot of experience. Some fundamental preconditions must be fulfilled for you to take great pictures. The right stance is as important as the right equipment.

Selecting your stance: The stance decides how realistic the building looks in the photo. This is especially true for modern structures with their challenging use of forms. Thus, you must take the trouble of walking around the object and observing it from all sides. Be inspired by other photographers.

The problem when capturing a large building from close quarters: one takes the photo from the bottom to the top. This causes parallel lines to converge. The building appears to be tipping out the photo from behind. There are special lenses, the so-called tilt lenses, which can eliminate this effect, but are too expensive. It is more reasonable to capture the building-if possible-,-from a distance and from a height with a tele lens. The resulting focal length considerably weakens the 'tilt effect'. You can now give the photo some finishing touches with the help of an image editor. Here, it is important that the building must not take up the entire space in the original photo, since elements at the edges get cut at the time of correction. On the PC, you can get rid of disturbing elements such as electric cables or traffic signs as well. For best results, make use of the Clone Stamp and the Patch tools in Photoshop.
Plus, do not always try to capture the entire object on the sensor. This is not at all required for ensuring the recognition value of a building. Let's take for example the Reichstag in Berlin: for the viewer to realize that the photographer is inside its dome, he only needs to capture some specific subjects while clicking. These include the corner towers armed with the German flag. It is also important that the photo is distinct and exciting at the same time with the right cut.

Using a wide angle: A powerful wide angle lens is also a part of the basic equipment which most photographers use. With reference to the format, it should be 24 millimeter or less. This comes in handy during indoor photography. For example, it can be used to capture wide halls. If you do not have a wide angle lens at hand, you can compile a panorama of several individual pictures. However, this is more difficult than in the case of landscape photos, since light conditions mostly require long exposure times. See to it that you take all pictures with the same time-aperture combination. When taking snaps, try to select the transitions in such a way that they do not rest on one light gradient or on one pattern. Plus, you can deliberately use the barrel-shaped distortions of an extremely wide angle lens. Absolute horizontal alignment of the camera and a well-thought out height are extremely important for good photos.

Selecting a suitable format: Don't underestimate the significance of image format in image effect. The subject itself dictates whether it should be captured vertically or horizontally. Skyscrapers, towers or obelisks are most impressive when taken in the vertical format. Castle grounds or bridges, on the other hand, are better off taken horizontally. Square cuts are suitable for cubic subjects.

The best thing to do would be to create several samples on the PC and place them next to each other.