Architectural Photography Almanac
A resource for working professional photographers and design industry professionals featuring news, commentary, equipment resources, and original articles
Beloved British Baking Show Contestant YouTuber Tom Scott is known for his short, humorous, informational videos covering everything from sending garlic bread into space to navigating the interior of the brain with neurosurgeons. In one of his most ambitious projects to date, Tom Scott tackles a topic that is close to the hearts of every artist: copyright.
I photograph a lot of homes for a lot of different clients with a lot of different end uses for those photographs. While in a perfect world I’d get a photo credit every time my work was submitted, sometimes that doesn’t happen and it’s up to me to get it fixed. Whether or not you think photo credit is important (it is, don’t @ me), you should always have any errors or omissions in credit resolved as soon as you can.
I think it’s safe to say that the current pandemic sucks for everyone involved. Short of toilet paper manufacturers, pretty much everyone on planet earth is dealing with ramifications and fallout of the ongoing…issue. A few days ago I asked a group of photographer colleagues how they were being impacted, and received a wide range of responses and opinions.
As a professional airport architect, HOK‘s Peter Ruggiero designs airports for a living, and he has been hard at work for years to improve New York’s most notorious, and Joe Biden’s favorite airport, LaGuardia. So what actually goes into optimizing the design of an airport terminal? This incredible video walks us through the wildly complex process.
San Francisco photographer Peter Lyons has been working all over the Bay Area for years now, and since the advent of cameras using built-in GPS, he’s geo-tagged nearly every photo he’s taken. Peter recently shared a screen shot of his work history and I was blown away.
As far as I’m concerned, Peter embodies the image of a classic working photographer.
No.
Today, I jump into a large 3-part question that I have strong thoughts on.
With over 800 staff working in five offices spanning the globe, RJ Models may be the undisputed leader in architectural model making. Countless major architects from Foster + Partners to Zaha Hadid to Arquitectonica and more have commissioned RJ to create models of their planned architectural projects.
A scout is an integral part of the architectural photography process, but one mistake I see a lot of photographers making is that they agree to a scout before they are in contract to complete the shoot. It’s gone pear-shaped on me enough that I implemented a policy requiring a deposit before any scouting takes place; here’s why.
Throughout our careers we find photographers and artists who inspire us at a deep level, and I am so happy to be able to bring you an interview with one such photographer today. Christopher Payne, who was educated as and practiced as an architect, has long been one of my favorites not only for his prowess as an architectural photographer but as an embodiment of the personal project and its ability to bring incredible opportunity for pursuing one’s interests, exploring incredible places, and shaping your career into something entirely your own.
For the last decade, I’ve been dealing with varying levels of on-again, off-again back pain and the associated frustrations that come along with it. From almost non-existent to “I literally can’t even get out of bed,” the pain has been with me in some form daily, affecting work, relationships, and so much more.
As architectural photography becomes a more popular genre both on and off the internet, the number of people taking part in critiques (whether warranted or not) has exploded. As a member of a number of groups and fora frequented by thousands of architectural photographers from all around the world, I’ve noticed an alarming trend over the past few years.
One of my most memorable shoots of 2019 took place at a beautiful location in Beverly Hills, CA. An architectural masterpiece designed by Walker Workshop situated on a ridgetop in the famed Trousdale Estates neighborhood, this house was an absolute stunner and the project had been on my radar for a good 3-4 years before I actually got the chance to photograph it.
In my never-ending quest to soak up as much architectural knowledge as possible, I stumbled across this video by one of our favorite YouTube channels, The B1M. While not directly related to architectural photography, the video provides a very interesting insight into the economics and struggles involved when it comes to pushing through landmark developments on the scale of Shanghai Tower, Burj Khalifa, etc – subjects that we’d all love to get hired to photograph.
This week, BH Photo Video is running a special that I actually think would benefit photographers looking to pick up a spare laptop for tethering or who are looking to scoop up a good deal on a pretty powerful computer. With Macbooks as low as $1200, and instant savings of $200 on the brand new 16″ Macbook Pro, if you’re in the market for a new laptop this might be a great time to buy – there are deals of all sorts on a wide variety of Macbooks, so check them out here.
Over the years I’ve had the great fortune of befriending many very talented photographers from around the world; I’ve also come to have an obsession with all things British thanks to binging episodes of Grand Designs and Top Gear. Consider me another American British Fetishist, I suppose.
I was recently talking to my mother and she said she was enjoying the blog – what was it called? Apple-maniac? Damnit, mom! And she’s not alone – I’ve had a few people bring it up in conversation, so I want to pose a couple questions to our excellent readership and settle the most important debate of our time.
It seems near-constantly that we are asked for ‘all rights’ to the photographs, or to own them in ‘perpetuity’ for some reason or another, but a recent e-mail exchange I was a part of presented a perfect opportunity to share one way I ensure my clients have the license they need while at the same time not giving in to overreach and a loss of image rights.
As architecture photographers, it is our job to have a solid understanding of architecture. I recently taught a workshop to a group of aspiring photographers and when I asked “who is familiar with the work of Richard Meier? Zaha Hadid?” a shockingly low number of hands went up – which tells me we have a problem here!
A group of high-profile architecture visualization professionals have banded together to ensure that they are properly credited when their work is disseminated throughout the architecture and media world at large. A problem that many photographers are also familiar with, for years, architectural visualization artists have found their work has gone uncredited when those assets are so vital to getting architecture projects off the ground.
Architects, interior designers, developers, and hotels don’t just exist in big cities, and neither do architectural photographers. I personally know photographers everywhere from the biggest cities in the world to remote and desolate areas, and they all have different definitions of success – but one thing is for sure and that is they are all making a healthy living at it, although using different methods and approaches.
Mike Kelley