A few days back I got a new assignment from EastBanc (real estate company). The company handles several major projects in Washington, DC. Previously I've done some assignments for them, but never talked much with them about the photographs (I knew that they liked them). First I didn't consider those assignments as something major or quite important for me (anyway I tried to do my best there). And this time I was very flattered when I received warm compliments about my work. I asked to see how my photographs looked in the brochure and was impressed. It sounds funny - being impressed by your own work – but it’s true. The photographs looked very well in the overall design of the brochure. So, I decided that I will share the pieces of information that helped me to make my clients happy.

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Here are my tips for architecture photography:

Time of day

Buildings don’t go anywhere and you have freedom to take those photographs any time. However most time the buildings are surrounded by everyday life: people, cars, construction signs or cones and even garbage. It would seem that there is no way to get a clear shot of the building without those annoying obstructions. Well, there is. If you come early in the morning, even on a workday, the number of cars will be minimum or none (if you are lucky).
There is another moment, which you may consider. Some clients will want to have a photograph where their property is shown in the midst of the everyday busy life: a lot of people and traffic. They want to show how good the location is for businesses that may occupy their property. In such instance, consider to do the shot during Friday evening or Saturday. Though on Saturday the traffic could be less heavy (or very insignificant).

Light & Illumination

You may think that buildings are not that pretty and nobody would notice if the light is not quite right. In my case, I am trying to approach the building as it would be a person in a portrait session. For my clients their property is more like a baby and they want to be proud of their baby. So, I always try to get the most flattering light – early morning and late evening. Or even a time before sunrise and after sunset, when the sky is blue and there is an even light without harsh shadows.
When you take photographs of the interior and include windows in your photograph, you have to watch for the burned highlights. The windows most probably will be completely white (especially if it is sunny outside). The best way to handle such situation is to do the interior photography right after the sunset. Then the light outside will be still bright enough to match the light intensity inside. Or take a couple of shots metering for the street light and for inside, and then combine in Photoshop.
Once I heard an interesting comment about a photograph I took – “The building seems alive, there is light inside”. The person was referring to the interior illumination. Many properties have some kind of lighting set. And those lights could be left on all night and day long. That’s why you can choose such time of the day, when the lights are visible and in a good contrast with the ambient light. It will make your photographs look much better.

Post-processing

For a portrait of a person we would do some retouching, such as removing blemishes, even the color of skin, add some catchlights into the eyes. With architecture photography I watch for those things as well. Of course, they are of another nature – parking meters, too much contrast between highlights and shadows, reflections in the windows and etc. Simply put – make your photograph prettier as you would do it for a portrait.

Reflections and Colors

Sometimes we need a clear look into the windows of the property. When the ambient light is too bright, the reflections of the street will create unwanted obstacles. The solution is a polarizing filter. The filter will allow you to cut off some (if not all) of the reflections and saturate the colors (because some of the glare will be gone). Though it will only work for some of the angles, so you have to choose the right camera position to get the full advantage of the filter.

Perspective

The best way to control perspective is to have either view camera or tilt and shift lens. If you have such tools then you naturally produce photographs without perspective distortion. Well, I don’t have such tools, but still there are a couple of ways to keep perspective in control. The first one is to keep you focal plane (plane of the sensor or the film) in parallel to the plane of the building (its walls). Sometimes it’s not possible (such that some part of the building will not fit into the frame) then there is the last resort – Photoshop. With Photoshop you can correct (to some degree) the perspective, simple select the area (probably the whole picture) and go to main menu: Edit, Transform, Perspective and play with it.

Extras

There is one thing that could create some artistic images for your clients. And it is the long exposure during the dark
time, when only the artificial lights illuminate the streets and the property you are photographing. Such photographs are not your main objective, but they add a nice touch to your collection of photographs and help your client to separate them selves from many others (in terms of the view on their property).
And finally, I want to add that when you have such assignment - take a lot of images in different formats (i.e. vertical, horizontal) and allow some space in the frame for square cropping. Simply provide your client with a lot of options to pick. For you an extra shot could cost a couple of minutes, for the client it could cost a whole new assignment.