Architecture and Photography
As Architects, the years of toil we put into our projects are finally paid off the day the photographer arrives. That is the pinnacle, the moment of reckoning. There’s no going back. A sparkling new, pristine finished project will be captured for posterity; it will never look better than this! No pressure on the photographer then…
At Lees Associates we are lucky to have, in the multi-talented Cristian Tudose, our own in-house photographer with over 10 years’ experience, who combines this role with his day job as an Architectural Assistant.
Here, Cristian discusses the vital relationship between architecture and photography.
Nowadays, everyone has some sort of camera at hand, whether it is a DSLR, a compact or just a ‘simple’ mobile phone. In an Architect’s life, photography plays a particularly important role: it allows us to capture spaces, details, moods, tell the story of our projects and it is the fastest way of communicating this information. We take photos in the day-to-day life for referencing, to record site events, to snag projects, to sketch over and, in the end, to immortalise the finished project.
Professional photographers are the ones who are the most qualified to shoot the finished product, the culmination of months’ or even years of hard work, to capture a piece of the architect’s or designer’s soul reflected in their creativity. Many people would ask why should they pay so much money and why it takes so much time for a photographer to ‘just point and shoot’? But of course it is not that simple. An initial site visit is needed to discover and understand the space, to test the lighting and to plan and stage the final photography session in order to overcome any site challenges and be able to highlight the most important parts of a project. On top of this, a photographer will be able to see things differently and capture features from projects in an artistic way that a non-photographer might not have thought of, transforming even the most mundane elements into the stars of the show.
The time of day and weather conditions play a very important role when trying to capture a space. In the evening, long and soft shadows might highlight a space lit through a skylight better than midday vertical hard shadows. If interior lighting is a feature of a space and it is mixed with natural light or even multiple light sources, then the problem becomes even more complex due to the difference in intensity and colour temperature. Timing is everything, which is why it can take hours or multiple sessions in order to capture the perfect light at the most appropriate time of day.
