Take one photo and get the best composition you can
- Use the rule of thirds
- Take a photo, then try a different focal length to get a different look
- Take photos from different angles
- Move back and forwards
- Use leading lines
- Find the best light
- Capture intricate architectural details
- Fill the frame
- Use negative space
- Convey the sense of scale of a building
- Try a long exposure
- Play with depth of field
- Find interesting subjects to photograph
- Don’t be put off by overcast days
- Give tilt-shift lenses a go
- Explore old buildings
- Go wider to capture the entire building, and a bit more
- Get the building vertical
- Then do this
- Choose a particular building and get to know it
And that was the answery bit. How utterly splendid.
You can listen to the episode right here
Or keep on reading – entirely up to you.
Hi, and a very warm welcome to Episode 206 of the Photography Explained podcast. I’m your host, Rick, and in each episode, I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 27 minutes (ish) without the irrelevant details. Yes, really.
I’m a professionally qualified photographer based in England with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you in my splendid podcast.
I will now go through these 21 tips that will help you take better photos of buildings. Most are composition-related, but I did stray a bit with some of them. They are all good stuff, all the same! And they are in the order that came into my head when I wrote this.
1 – Take one photo and get the best composition you can
Yes, this again. This is still a great way to approach taking photos – just try to take the best one photo that you can of a building. If you could only take one photo of a building, which one would it be? Think about this and try to get that one photo. Once you have done that, move on. Ok, if you want to take another photo of a different part of the building, that is fine, but get that one photo first.
2 – Use the rule of thirds
The rule of thirds helps place a building within the viewfinder. And if you can add the 3×3 grid to your camera LCD screen, even better, as the horizontal lines and vertical lines will help you get the building aligned correctly, saving you time later. We should always be aiming to get the best photos that we can in camera, rather than relying on fixing things later.
3 – Take a photo, then try a different focal length to get a different look
Different focal lengths give different perspectives and depths of field. You can use different focal lengths from different positions, but with the same composition. The different focal lengths will give different outcomes. Take a photo at 50mm, then walk back and take the same photo with a 200mm focal length, then walk forward and take the same photo with a 28mm focal length and compare the results. While doing this, try different apertures each time you take photos, and you might find something different that you like. We shouldn’t restrict ourselves to wide-angle lenses for photos of buildings, just as with landscape photography. You can use a telephoto lens to take photos of buildings.
4 – Take photos from different angles
I start face on and central, and go left and right and up and down if I can, to try to find an interesting or new view of a building. Down can be somewhere else, or on the floor. Up could be somewhere else, or 5m above the ground with my camera stuck on a painter’s pole. Yes, I have a painters pole and an attachment that screws on the end of the pole that fits the tripod thread on the my camera. Using the Canon app and a bit of ingenuity, I can take photos of a building from 5m above ground level, which can make a huge difference. Think about it. If you are photographing a two-storey building, you can place your camera on the first floor level, giving a different perspective.
You have to be careful using a painter’s pole in public spaces, though! But it is still safer than using a drone, which is a no-no in occupied public spaces.
5 – Move back and forwards
As well as doing what I said with different focal lengths, move backwards to photograph the building in its environment, this is a context photo. The design of new buildings will factor in adjacent buildings as part of the consent process. Planners require consideration of the impact of a building on the environment in which it will be placed, and this is great to identify and capture.
And you can move forward and get compositions of parts of the building, including detail shots.
6 – Use leading lines
Buildings, and the bits around them, have lines within them, and you can use these to guide the eye. Think of footpaths, planting, anything around the building that you can use to frame a building and direct the eye wherever you want to. And then there are, of course, the natural lines within a building that can be used.
This is a great compositional consideration when photographing buildings – use the lines that are there to influence your composition.
7 – Find the best light
Photography is drawing with light. I think I have said this before. Just saying. So, find the best light for that one photo of a building. This is one of the benefits of just trying to get one photo – you can work out where the best light is and when, as our free overhead light source moves throughout the day. So, the time of day and how the light relates to a building need some careful consideration.
And we need to think beyond the headline times, golden hour, blue hour, etc. We have to be able to take photos during the day – well, I do anyway!
8 – Capture intricate architectural details
Some buildings will have amazing, intricate details. Find them and capture them as details. They can often get lost in the sheer scale of a building. To find them, research before you go to a building, or when you get there, have a good old look and see what you can find. This is what I prefer to do, although I know doing research makes sense, as I do not know what I am missing by not doing this. I am just not very good at researching places before I go to them. As my wife knows all too well….
9 – Fill the frame
Fill the frame with that lovely building, make it the star of the show. Exclude everything else. And then try this.
10 – Use negative space
Move back, use the space around the building to make it breathe. And see which you prefer. There is no right or wrong answer here. We will all have our own thoughts and preferences, but you need to do both to work out which you prefer.
11 – Convey the sense of scale of a building
A really effective way of doing this is to include something that is familiar to us, that clearly shows the scale of a building. A person works perfectly for this. Take a photo of a massive building with a person in front of it, and it is easy to appreciate the size and scale of the building. If there aren’t any people about, or you are worried about having strangers in your photos, then why not include yourself? This could become your thing, so give it a try. Either use the self-timer (if you can get where you need to be in less than 10 seconds) or get a decent remote release. Sorted. How utterly splendid. I love doing this.
12 – Try a long exposure
Why a long exposure photo of a building? Well, if there are moving clouds, you can blur them, giving your photo of that building a completely different feel. One way to do this is using a neutral density filter – more on that in the next episode. Good link, Rick, very slick.
13 – Play with depth of field
When photographing a building, you need to make sure there is enough depth of field to make the entire building sharp. Alternatively, reduce the depth of field so that part of a building is sharp, or a tiny single element of the building. There is a lot that you can do with depth of field, especially if you combine this with creative placement of yourself and creative composition. It is easy to forget that doing anything other than having all the building sharp is a possibility, so have a play around and see what you get.
14 – Find interesting subjects to photograph
I wouldn’t spend too much time on a boring building. I would spend time on something interesting, though. And indeed, this is what I do. This could be architecturally, construction-wise, or locationally interesting. Or a famous building. A boring but famous building is interesting in a different way from an architecturally interesting building.
If you want to take interesting photos, find something interesting to photograph!
15 – Don’t be put off by overcast days
I live in England. We know clouds too well. But I don’t let them put me off. I embrace and love clouds and make them part of a photo, part of the composition. I would find blue skies boring – I keep asking if living somewhere with permanent blue skies is boring or not, but I’m still waiting for someone to tell me.
Clouds are a photographer’s friend, and let’s not forget that when you have moving clouds, you have other creative opportunities to explore, which I mentioned before.
16 – Give tilt-shift lenses a go
Tilt-shift lenses are specialist lenses that serious architectural photographers use. I used to have one. But I sold it and manage in other ways. The problem I had was that it was a manual focus lens, and when you get to my age and with my eyesight, this is a challenge for sure. I wish I had persisted, though, and I plan to buy another one sometime.
With a tilt-shift lens, in simple terms, you can photograph a tall building without the converging verticals. It is a wondrous thing to be able to do. The more I think about this, the more I want one of these marvels again. One day, Rick, one day, the Canon 17mm TSE lens will be mine.
17 – Explore old buildings
I love old buildings. Old buildings provide so much interest. Old buildings have histories, stories they can tell. I don’t look at modern buildings the same way I look at old buildings. As clever as modern buildings are, they are just not the same for me. So, find an old building somewhere and explore what it has to offer, and you might be surprised by what you find. Old buildings have ageing on their side too, which provides an endless source of interesting stuff that we can capture. An endless variety of designs, materials and construction techniques from over the years make old buildings amazing subject matters.
But always be careful, make sure your exploring is safe, and if you are not sure, do not proceed. No photo is worth an injury. Ever. And even more so with derelict buildings. Photograph them from the outside, but do not go into them – they are dangerous places that we should not be in.
18 – Go wider to capture the whole building, and a bit more
You have to go wide to get all of a large building in. And you need to go even wider, unless you are using a tilt-shift lens that is. Why? Well, you can’t photograph a large building without getting converging verticals, so you need the extra space around it for what I am about to come on to. I know I have said this before, but this is worth repeating. You have a building that is leaning in and loads of space around it – what next?
19 – Get the building vertical
Very important. Unless you are photographing the Leaning Tower of Pisa, that is. And if you want to know more about me photographing the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or Tower of Pisa as it is actually called, I wrote about this in an email I sent to subscribers. If you want that email, let me know. And subscribe to my email list to get a weekly email from me. More on that later.
But most buildings are built straight and true, and we need to accurately capture this. Get the horizontal lines level, and the vertical lines vertical, which for tall buildings is often a combination of going back wide enough to capture the complete building and giving enough working space to make the building vertical in post processing. This is editing that is fine, as you can’t normally photograph a tall building correctly – it is simply impossible. Yes, this is acceptable photo editing manipulation.
20 – Then do this
Get your building vertical. And does it look normal? Quite often, they do not, and if so, I like to give a little lean back to make things look more normal. We are used to looking at tall buildings that have converging verticals, so having a building look ramrod vertical, whilst technically correct, just might look odd. So, try this and see what you think.
21 – Choose a particular building and get to know it
If you can pick a building that you can get to easily, keep going back to it and trying new things. Well, all of the above, to be honest. And once you have adopted a building of choice that you can easily get to, keep on going back at different times of the day and also different times of the year, as the conditions will vary over the course of days and a year. Unless you are in a wall-to-wall sunshine location – and if you are, is it boring? Let me know, dear listener.
What if I use a phone to take photos?
Basically, most of the above applies. Phones come with wider-angle lenses these days – my iPhone has a wide-angle lens that purports to be a 13mm focal length, which equates to a very wide angle focal length with a full-frame camera.
The problem with taking photos with a phone for me is getting the composition bang on – I take my time but never seem to get buildings as level and vertical as I do with my camera, even with the grid lines to help me.
So, take care when you are composing photos of buildings with a phone.
What do I do?
I photograph buildings. I am an architectural photographer, and I love architecture photography, building photography, construction photography, call it what you want, I love it. I use a full-frame Canon 6D with a 17-40mm lens for most of my photos of buildings. And most of the time, I use the 17mm focal length, which I love. There is no reason why I can’t go with a 17mm tilt shift lens, really other than justifying the cost, and it stopping me from buying other stuff that I might need more. And there is the manual focus issue that I have to get over!
I love taking photos of buildings with my camera, but not so much with my phone, which I mentioned before.
I enjoy trying different angles and viewpoints and always try to get something a bit different. And I normally try to get one photo, then move on to something else. Move on, Rick.
And that is what I do.
Some thoughts from the last episode
Well, it was rather splendid, wasn’t it? I use a tripod for photos of buildings, too. And I take photos of buildings in a very similar way to how I take landscape photos. Composition-wise and technically. And gear-wise, too, which is nice.
Next episode
ND Filters – What Are They? What Do They Do? Do I Need One? Yes, a real change. I wrote about this in my weekly email and decided that I want to cover these in their own episode. I have one ND filter, ND being short for neutral density, but it is one of my favourite bits of gear. So, looking forward to that.
A quick plug for me and what I do.
Well, why not? If I can’t plug myself on my podcast, where can I?
You have found this podcast, so why not check out the podcast website photographyexplainedpodcast.com? I have another photography website, rickmcevoyphotography.com, where I write blog posts about my photographs of buildings and other good stuff. On my courses page, you will find my course, How to Become A Real Estate Photographer. You can also find me on YouTube talking about my podcast and my blog – type my name in, and you will soon find me.
Get an email from me.
If you want a weekly email from me, fill in the box on any of my websites, and every Friday, you will read what I am thinking about photography-related.
That’s enough of the self-promotion.
Ask me a question
If you have a question you would like me to answer or you just want to say hi, email me at sales@rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk, visit the podcast website, or text me from the podcast feed.
It is always lovely to hear from you, dear listeners.
This episode was brought to you by a cheese and pickle sandwich and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps. Yes, I consumed it before settling in my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium.
I’ve been Rick McEvoy. Thanks again for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast (it says here) and for giving me 27 minutes of your valuable time. I reckon this episode will be about 30 minutes long after I have edited out the mistakes and other bad stuff.
Thanks for listening
Take care and stay safe.
Cheers from me, Rick
That was the podcast episode
Want to know more?
Head over to the Start page on the Photography Explained Podcast website to find out more.
And here is the list of episodes published to date – you can listen to any episode straight from this page which is nice.
Let me know if there is a photography thing that you want me to explain and I will add it to my list. Just head over to the This is my list of things to explain page of this website to see what is on there already.
Let me send you stuff
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And finally a little bit about me
Finally, yes this paragraph is all about me – check out my Rick McEvoy Photography website to find out more about me and my architectural, construction, real estate and travel photography work. I also write about general photography stuff, all in plain English without the irrelevant detail.
Thank you
Thanks for listening to my podcast (if you did) and reading this blog post (which I assume you have done as you are reading this).
Cheers from me Rick
