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Architecural Photogaphy


Jeff Mottle
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I do a bit, pretty amateurish though. All taken with a Minolta X-700 manual SLR.

 

Over here

 

Most are just quick shots of stuff that take my interest. I always say to myself that I should spend more time on working out composition, but I always rush things ;)

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Hi Jeff,

 

I used to walk around with a digital camera attached to my side for over two years and I've shot lots of things. Unfortunately, I do not have much spare time to 'photoshop' those pictures (because digital camera's don't shoot black&white).

 

I've shot lots of historical buildings like medieval castles, churches and cathedrals everywhere in Europe. Also got a huge collection of modern belgian architecture (mainly construction-site history) and lots of bunkers (WWII-stuff). But mostly I like rare city-views.

 

rgds

 

nisus

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Cool guys! I like your work kid. Some good shots in there. I'm still trying to find the time to head downtown one day and shoot some of the building in Calgary. Might have to pick up a wide angle lens for my digicam tho. You guys shoot wide angle?

Nisus, most of the newer camera have a black and white mode. I know mine does. I have a Nikon 995. Havn't tried it much yet though. I was reading a debate on whether you could achieve better results with Photohop ot straight B&W from the camera on DPreview, but I can't remember what the conclusion was. Once I get some pics up I'll post em. So far all I have on my site is about 70 pics from a heli-tour through the rockies near my house. Not too architectural.

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Hi Jeff

 

nice topic. Just a bit of fun here so hope you see the lighter side of it -

 

2 weeks ago my company took me up in a helicopter over my home patch. i took numerous photos for future montage work.

 

what a great time i had. helicopter trips just rock!

 

Anyway, i'm not generally into photography, but hey, i just couldn't resist. I actually took a fair few photos, but this is the only 1 i so far managed to scan in.

 

Especially for my brother this one of my house (circled) but i thought you guys might like a look see -

 

myhouse.jpg

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Hi all,

 

To Jeff: Well I think I got an old camera than (more than 2 years allready). Being a photoshop-veteran - a color-corrector-retouche-wizard (hum) - I can guess the reason why it's better to take your shots in RGB than grayscale: RGB gives you three channels with information, while grayscale only gives you one. If you want to do serious b&w-photography you should be able to finetune the levels to your will. The most powerful method to do so is to copy/mix/twist the channels. Real channel-cops know that you have 10 channels to work with if you original is RGB, while you only have one in grayscale.

Unfortunately photographing anything but human beings, you can run into lots of problems because the jpg-compression used in most digital camera's is very hard on the blue channel, medium on the green and low on the red. The reason for this is that the compression is optimized for human beings - having a pink/red skin - so you don't need much blue. Therefor a hard compression is not noticable unless you photograph blue skies like I do.

So practically, you don't have 10 channels unless you use lossless tif-compression of course :)

So far for the channel-copy-manifesto... (hum)

 

To Strat: djee this is fun! I took over 300 photo's from my hometown during an airballon ride last year. Unfortunately I still don't know how to up my pictures to any space I should have on the net... but I'll mail it to you ;)

 

I missed only one thing in your photo: the walking distance to the beach! ;-p

 

rgds

 

nisus

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nisus - i look foreward to seeing more of ur piccys :)

 

i love flying and aviation - a megga passion of mine. been up in almost most things other than a balloon. love to do that.

 

i'll scan in some of my more serious piccys and post them up Jeff

 

Btw - walking distance to beach = about 10 mins (or 2 hours when drunk, notice all the pubs/bars)

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Wow! you guys are so fortunate to live where there is so much interesting and rich architecture. Calgary is only just over 100 years old and most of our heritage buildings were torn down in the 70's for new buildings and skyscrapers. Not like we needed the space or anything, it is so plentiful here. Anyway here are a couple of pics of my house. Took this the other day while trying to shoot some sky maps.

 

mountains.jpg

 

downtown1.jpg

 

Heli-tour (45 min from my house) Off topic, but hey I guess it's landscape architecture.

Here

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Hi all,

 

Strat: tnx a lot ;) Gonna try that webspace

 

Samp: I was in a hot-air balloon, standing on a piece of wood of around 4cm thickness... Great! Especially when you're very afraid of heights...

 

I live between 'De Vooruit' en 'De Kouter'... pink spot on the picture...

 

rgds

 

nisus

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replying to the first post, I have some architectural photos in my homepage. There are many photos from New York, and the World Trade Center towers.

There are also some pictures of buildings taken from courious points of view or only showing parts of a building resulting as an abstract picture. I

would put the names of the buildings, but since they are very famous buildings, it's more funny to guess them hehe

 

sorry the site is only in spanish now. but pictures are pictures :p

http://www.hedaweb.tk

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I am quite jealous of the images seen here. My homeland is so boring compared to these. No hills, no cityscape...just roads and buildings here. I would love to look at the scenery shown everyday on my way to work! biggrin2.gif

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I'm sorry... I want to make an english version this summer.. I don't have time now.. but it will be in english.. sure.. heh.. but it's quite similar.. try in the top menu "imagenes"="pictures" and then "imagenes de arquitectura"="architecture pictures".

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  • 9 months later...

I have just read David Wright's article about communication and architectural visualisation. I found alot of truth in what he said and what he has learned from his experience. I just thought that i would post these links for anyone interested in the topic of 'communication' of the concepts in architecture. I have noticed alot of people here trying to tackle subjects like the Barcelona Pavilion and so on. How to interpret these buildings in visual still images being anything but easy i think. Hertzog and de Meuron have always used the services of a professional photographer called Thomas Ruff to get proper images of their work for publication. What is interesting about Thomas Ruff, is that most of the final images he produces are manipulated on computer before final outputting. There is a widespread acceptance of digital manipulation in the photographic communities nowadays which surprised me at first. Photographers view the computer as yet another piece of their arsenal, not as some form of cheating etc. This i believe is partly due to the use of computers by guys like Ruff.

 

http://www.postmedia.net/ruff/architecture.htm

 

I particularly like the way he managed to 'abstract' some of the nature of the Barcelona Pavilion in that one. There is quite a good explanation of his view points here:

 

http://www.a-matter.com/eng/related/Thomas-Ruff-re044-01-n.asp

 

 

It is altogether interesting to see how a very famous photographer has dealt with the subject matter of architecture.

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Thankyou ever so much for that link.

 

I must share an amusing little anecdote with you also. Because i notice alot of the photographers featured at that web site make great shots, because of using very carefully staged compositional techniques.

 

I remember being out on the town here in Dublin, Ireland once and going to see a good movie at an 'art house' cinema. Anyhow, after the movie i was in the bar area with the guys and i got talking to this middle-aged guy. We proceeded to have a nice discussion about cinema, movies, art, photography, design.... and said farewell to each other.

 

I didn't think much about that meeting until a couple of years later i was watching a good documentary about how young British photographers in the 1960s broke away from the very classical approach to the art. The documentary interviewed a guy called David Bailey.

 

http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2000/06/17/27100.html

 

and i just went hey, now where did i meet that guy before? Then i remembered. David Bailey, in the documentary just said he came from a poor part of London, and worked very hard to 'make it' in a profession that was way 'up there' and quite studio/apprenticeship based.

 

David Bailey said in the documentary, i am great at getting other people to talk and give me some ideas. "Whenever i am out and about, i pretend i know nothing about anything and that is how i learn new things."

 

I realised that i had also talked an awful lot about 'my ideas' on cinema and design to David Bailey when i had met him in person. I never ONCE even suspected him to be one of the most famous photographers of the whole century. If i am not mistaken, Bailey was actually the first person ever to use standard 35mm film for a Vogue magazine fashion shoot. He never told Vogue the shots were 35mm, because if he did they would have demanded large format!

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garethace,

 

Connas a ta tu.

 

That was a cool story. One thing that I see suck about having all members on the forum being from differnt countries is that I want to travel more. I loved Dublin. Considering the politcal situation here I wouldnt mind heading out to the EU for a few (decades).

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