Architectural Photography
Architectural Photography on Arkitecture on Web is the section dedicated to the gathering and analysis of all those photoshoots which focus on architecture and successfully capture its essence.
Architecture and photography - one has to recognise - share a special relationship.
The two disciplines, in fact, both speak a language whose lexicon consists of colours, volumes, lighting, perspective, composition and dynamism. Out of this common ground, the unique discipline of architectural photography is born.
In the articles you find below we try, therefore, to pay justice to this shared visual koiné by keeping the written word to a minimum and let architectural photography speak for itself.
Welcome to architectural photography!
About Architectural Photography
Architectural photography was pretty much born with photography itself. The first ever permanent photograph, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s 1827 aptly named point de vue (french for point of view) features a rural building in countryside France. It was the beginning of a longstanding and proficuous relationship between photography and architecture.
Architecture has always been a perfect subject for artists even before the birth of photography. Let us think about Raffaello’s The School of Athens, Piranesi’s etchings or Canaletto’s views of Venice, compositions which put a massive emphasis on architectural elements. It was only right that the newborn art of photography would also seek architecture as a subject.
Architectural photography, though, proved overtime to be way better than art at capturing the essence of architecture. With their hands free of technical constraints, architectural photographers could invest time and energy into exploring different points of view, perspectives, lightings, angles and compositions, in order to highlight the uniqueness of each architectural vision.
Over the decades, many photographers specialized into the field of architectural photography, each innovating in his and her own particular way. Francis Frith, Albert Levy, the Phyllis Dearborn and Robert Massar duo, Eric de Maré, Lucien Hervé (who worked closely with Le Corbusier), Hélène Binet (encouraged to take this path by Daniel Libeskind)
and Iwan Baan, to name a few photographers who dabbled - when not outright specialized - in architectural photography.
The latest technologies also contributed to expanding the discipline. Digital cameras now allow for longer exposure times and way easier perspective control, while ever cheaper drones with better cameras make way more affordable for architectural photographers to access aerial views of buildings and so better capture their spatiality.
Find out the latest trends and photoshoots in architectural photography below!
