ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Photo: Cesar Bejar

Guadalaja Apartments /Departamento de Arquitectura, FORMAtaller

Architectural photography became a branch of photography with its own personality and specialization. It was born from the need to show architectural constructions, and not only in an informative way.

Buildings are portrayed as protagonist elements in this type of photography, both the exterior and the interior. An architectural photo sometimes involves a team of people that goes beyond the creator of the image; quite often, the architects, interior designers or designers who are also involved in the process.

Architectural photography, besides being a branch of photography, is also a discipline itself, as it implies a series of specific knowledge to portray buildings correctly.

This type of photography includes capturing images of buildings, both residential and public, in interior and exterior locations; but also other structures such as bridges or cityscapes as a whole.

The need for architectural photography

It is about documenting buildings, completed projects or projects in process of construction to be shown and perceived, both for potential investors or buyers, as a portfolio sample (which both artists and architects need), and for the general public. 

These photographs can end up in publications, such as specialized magazines, books, exhibitions, advertising pamphlets... It all depends on the purpose and type of construction to be portrayed.

Light and architecture 

Photography uses light to capture images and  it plays an extremely important role in architecture. In the case of buildings from the outside, natural light is essential to achieve the desired photograph. 

The effect that the architect planned to achieve is taken into account. Depending on the type of light, colors and textures will be perceived differently. It is necessary to take into account whether a diffused light (cloudy day) or a hard light (sunny) is appropriate, and which time of the day is more propitious for the capture.

Photo: Fernando Guerra

Apartamentos Chagas / João Tiago Aguiar Arquitectos

How architectural photographers work

Professional architectural photographers work in a very different way than other types of photographers, specially when compared to portrait or social photography.

Since the beginning of the history of photography, different buildings and urban landscapes have been documented using a tripod as a camera support. The tripod is an element that is still used today as a fundamental part of an architectural photographer's equipment.

Regarding  the optics used in architectural photography, the wide-angle lens are usually the standard lens. But depending on what you want to achieve, you should pay attention to the focal length, because a very extreme wide angle distorts the perspective of the image. This type of distortion is usually avoided by placing the camera parallel to the focal plane and it can also be corrected using an edition program, such as Lightroom.

It is true that for interior photography, wide-angle lens that distorts straight lines are usually recommended to capture the entire space of a room in a single dimension (the photograph). But in pure architectural photography or outdoors, this is usually avoided.

Something very common in architectural photography, since the beginning of this discipline, is the use of polarizing filters to avoid reflections on the glass and intrusive light. Nowadays, images can be edited to turn them into what we want, avoiding uncomfortable brightness or perspective distortions from the beginning makes the post-production work easier.

Some Architectural photographers

Adriá Goula

Photo: Adriá Goula

Transformation of a warehouse / Thomas Raynaud + Paul Devarrieux

Adrià Goula Sardà studied at Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB) being graduated in 2000. He initially worked as an architect in different architecture offices in Barcelona as well as in Paris. In 2004 he began his professional career as a architectural photographer.

He has made more than 1000 national and international works for renowned architects and different public and private organizations. He is currently expanding his professional domain into the moving image, creating short movies about architecture. Time, sound and movement in parallel, adding the photographic approach; this is the new material with which Adrià is working to create new ways of communicating the Architecture.

Jesús Granada

Photo: Jesús Granada

30 rental housing  for young people. Santiago de Molina.

Since 1999 he has taken photographs for thousands of projects in 22 countries for architects, publishers and companies related to architecture and construction. He has made monographs for international architectural firms.

He works on the composition, the framing of the image, even mental scenographies before taking the photograph. Jesús Granada begins his work by dedicating time to talk, creating a narrative, the mental vision of the architecture in front of him.

César Béjar

Photo: Cesar Bejar

Casa Misiones Villa 6

Architect graduated from the University of Guadalajara in 2015, founder of César Béjar Studio where he works as an architect and architectural photographer. 

With studies at the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid in 2013, where he had his first approach to architectural photography. He has collaborated, inside and outside the country, in the photographic documentation of projects with architects from Mexico and Spain.

Fernando Guerra

Photo: Fernando Guerra

Casa MF/ Spaceworkers

Fernando Guerra's photographs are distinguished by their cleanliness; by an intensity that allows for a clear visualization of the physical aspects of each project; and by a technique that avoids excessive sophistication making the purity of the image latent at the same time. Without forgetting the constant human presence. A way of approaching that his words make us understand as a conviction, but also as an act of reaction.

Íñigo Budejo Aguirre

Photo: Íñigo Budejo

Iñigo Bujedo Aguirre is probably the greatest architectural photographer in our country, with a fantastic work and a great use of the resources that the constructions provide him. The Catalan trained in Social Sciences and Journalism at the University of the Basque Country, specializing in Image, Communication and Photography at Goldsmiths College.

Master in Collective Housing UPM/ETH

The Master of Advanced Studies in Collective Housing is a professional and international postgraduate programme that is developed on a full-time basis, dealing with advanced architectural design in the city and housing. It is designed and taught jointly by the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH).

The admission period for MCH2022 is already opened, and it will remain so till 31.01.2022 or until vacancies are filled. 

For more information, click here!