Pro vs Amateur Architectural Photographer: And the Winner is…

A little over a year ago Mike Kelley, the head honcho, and big cheese at AP Almanac lost against Lee Morris in an architectural photography challenge. This was a huge surprise and an upsetting result for many who are fans of Kelley. This year they decided on doing a similar contest to see who is, in fact, the best architectural photographer between the two.

For this particular challenge, both participants photographed a 6 million dollar home. The camera they used was the Fujifilm GFX 50s which is a brilliant medium format camera. All of the dynamic range available in the camera can be extremely useful when shooting landscapes and interiors Which it seems Morris didn’t want to make full use of. For this second challenge, Kelley was determined not to lose again; he describes how the previous loss ruined him emotionally. Of course, this is not meant to be taken seriously and these contests are all done in good fun.

The results are now in and everything with the world seems right again. Kelley won by a significant margin in the votes. Morris does describe how he wasn’t extremely confident with the images he had produced prior to seeing the results. Personally, I think Morris is a very talented architectural photographer and although he calls himself an amateur, the quality of work he produces is obviously not of someone who is inexperienced. Based on the overall results will we be seeing a third challenge next year to determine once and for all who is, in fact, the best between the two?

Check out the full video to see behind the scenes for each image.