I’m alway surprised at how hard architectural photography actually is. With street photography you deal with moving subjects and you have to make quick decisions, while with architectural photography your subject is still and usually you have all the time in the world to photograph it. Still its very hard to photograph a building in an original way, and your photo can easily turn out as an tourist snapshot instead of an interesting and cool photograph. Here some tips to create interesting architectural photographs, accompanied by some photos I took of the Heydar Aliyev museum in Baku.
Tip 1
Take shots of the building in different weather condition or at different times of the day as this can make a great difference on your shot.
Tip 2
Don’t try to get the whole building in the frame. Sometimes it can be cool to use a wide angle lens and get everything in, but I’m shooting with a micro 4/3 camera so I don’t really have that option. I rather look for cool angles and isolate a part of the building.
Tip 3
Add people to the frame. A great way to show the scale of what your photographing is by putting a person in the frame. Try to avoid getting whole groups of tourist in there, but wait for a quiet moment and get a lonely wander in the frame.
Let me know what you think!