Architectural Photography Almanac
A resource for working professional photographers and design industry professionals featuring news, commentary, equipment resources, and original articles
I have found Bjarke Ingels to be one of the most fascinating architects who is constantly pushing the envelope in terms of maximizing site potential and what is possible architecturally. Last year, a documentary was released about the design and construction of the world’s cleanest waste-to-energy plant, CopenHill.
Sanjog Mhatre is an architecture photographer based in India. Now based in the country’s second-most populous city, Mumbai, Sanjog has at the ripe age of only 23 years, already photographed dozens (132 to be exact!) of the tallest and most significant buildings in this supercity of 20 million people.
Have you ever had a client ask you to take a photo that looks like a previously made render? I bet that most of us architectural photographers have been confronted with this (at times impossible) task. As a result of quarantine boredom, an interesting thought occurred to me: What if I were to invert this process, trying to replicate one of my actual photographs using a rendering program?
Recently I came across a portfolio review video from Rishabh Wadhwa’s YouTube channel, BlessedArch. Together with Mariana Cabugueira Custodio dos Santos, a Portuguese architect working for Zaha Hadid Architects in London, they review and critique architectural portfolios.
While the criteria between an architectural portfolio and a photography portfolio are not one and the same, I believe there are a lot of parallels between the two.
A year after transitioning from architecture to architectural photography full-time, I wanted to share some initial thoughts comparing and contrasting the two professions. Hopefully, this will resonate with others who have, or are considering, making a similar sort of career transition.
Let’s face it, 2020 was rough. And while the new year will by no means see a complete return to anything resembling normal – there are certainly reasons to be hopeful. Vaccines are already beginning to be distributed in many countries and, more specific to our line of work, the construction industry seems to be picking back up.
What do you get when you bring together a hotel brand known for producing design excellence to traditionally less-traveled locales, a gorgeous, geographically-unique location, and an architecture firm known for designing some of the most extraordinary cultural buildings in the world’s most populous country?
As I continue to mature as a photographer, I am finding that I learn most from fellow peers who share a more in-depth analysis about a single image – taking us through their thought process in how they constructed the image and why they chose a certain composition or a particular way to light the scene.
Close your eyes and think far back. Back before Covid ruined your travel plans. Now go even further back, before Instagram let you geotag your location — heck, even before Instagram itself. Think back to a time when phone cameras were terrible and you had to ration your texts and emails.
Qi Xi is a Shanghai-based landscape architectural photographer. He and I met earlier this year at a mutual friend’s art salon where we both presented some of our respective work. Qi has been capturing some of the most significant landscape architectural designs all across China and I absolutely love his work.
German photographer, Hans Georg (HG) Esch is one of the world’s most acclaimed architectural photographers. HG Esch lives and works in Hennef / Stadt Blankenberg, Germany, but his work spans the globe, with a particular emphasis on some of the most significant projects in China. So when I saw that he had photographed the recently completed supertall CITIC Tower in Beijing, I knew I wanted to interview him to gain some insight into his process as well as share the gorgeous imagery with our audience.
Israeli-Canadian architect, Moshe Safdie, first visited China in 1973. Little did he know then, that nearly five decades later, he would realize one of the largest, most audacious architectural projects not only in China but on the entire planet.
Raffles City Chongqing is the latest city-defining mega-project designed by Safdie, one that has been beautifully captured by Chinese-American filmmaker Jia Li.
For those of us living in California and the rest of the West Coast of the US, it’s been a crazy few months to say the least. Wildfire smoke has engulfed nearly every part of the region at some point over the past two months, turning skies grey and orange from Los Angeles to Seattle.
Many architectural photographers have continued to work through the fires and the resulting smoke – myself included – to great frustration and annoyance.
German architect Ole Scheeren’s TED talk from a few years ago has inspired me both as an architect and a photographer. Founder and principal of the architecture firm that bears his name, Büro Ole Scheeren, Scheeren’s talk underscores his belief that ‘form follows fiction’ and that buildings must do much more than simply provide form to accommodate functional needs.
Knowing how to accurately represent space as seen by the human eye into a bidimensional media is relatively new. Early art depictions tend to focus on the spiritual and not on a literal representation of the world. Size and proportion of the subjects responded to hierarchy levels. It wasn’t until the Renaissance (circa 1415) that Brunelleschi’s proved a rational system to precisely represent depth and space, the linear perspective.
I must confess that I have never pressed the record button on my camera. Lately, the growing number of video platforms and the demand for architectural video has made me think twice about dabbling in video. Watching or re-watching films paying special attention to the role of architecture is a powerful tool and source of inspiration available to anyone interested in both architectural photography and video.
Do I need a tilt-shift lens to photograph tall buildings? It’s a question I get a lot. The quick answer is pretty straightforward. Do you want to do it professionally? If so, yes, you need one (actually you need two). Do you want to do it as a hobby? Then no, you absolutely do not need one.
I am absolutely infatuated with tall buildings. Mike Kelley has his airplanes, I’ve got my skyscrapers. Or so I thought. For more than two decades, China (where I am based) has experienced unprecedented growth in the number of constructed high-rise buildings, but alas we may be seeing the end of an era for skyscrapers in the Middle Kingdom.
Imagine being on the frontline of the 20th-century transition in the artistic world of photography. From the pristine landscapes captured by Ansel Adams to man-altered landscapes through industry and construction, there was so much changing in the world. This was the reality that Hilla and Bernd Becher had to face.
It’s incredible to think about what people in the 1920s went through to put food on the table. The title of this video describes how the men in the film risked their lives to build iconic skyscrapers in New York. The likely truth is that they risked their lives for their families and futures and not for New York itself.
Veeral Patel
Justin Szeremeta
Dane Alonso
Lexi Taciak
Mike Kelley
Usman Dawood