Smart Phone Smart Photography by Jo Bradford

Author:Jo Bradford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ryland Peters & Small
Published: 2018-11-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 1 LESSON 2

ARCHITECTURAL LINES

BUILDINGS ARE TRICKY THINGS TO PHOTOGRAPH. THEIR HEIGHT IN RELATION TO US TINY HUMANS MAKES IT AWKWARD TO GET THE COMPOSITION AND FRAMING RIGHT, BUT THAT’S NO REASON NOT TO TRY.

Use the screen’s grid lines (see page 15) to help compose your scene. Pick a vertical line in your scene to be the focal point and line it up to the screen grid so it is straight; don’t worry about the rest leaning, you can either live with it or try to fix that in the edit if necessary!

If you have a structure with lots of lines going in different directions, such as a bridge, make sure the bridge supports are straight along the vertical axis and form a neat 90º angle to the horizon line (which should be straight too). Follow this procedure and you will have done the best you can to manage a difficult composition.

Try stepping back a few paces to take in the whole of a building from a corner edge, so that you can see down two sides of the building at once. This instantly provides the composition with diagonal leading lines and a sense of enhanced perspective, giving a better impression of the building’s true three-dimensional form. If those leading lines guide the eye to a point beyond the building where the landscape around the structure is visible, that’s even better!

Look for opportunities to safely take photos of buildings from a bridge or anywhere that allows you to position yourself above ground level.

Buildings reflected in other buildings will lend symmetry to your pictures, so don’t forget to look up and see if you can spot any!

If all else fails, look for some details to focus in on. Doors and windows close to eye-level are less likely to suffer from those pesky converging verticals (see right), and can give a good sense of the architecture of a building, so you could make a composition focused on those aspects.

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