Communication is more than just words; communication is architecture. Because of course it is quite obvious that a house which would be built without that sense, without that desire for communication, would not look the way your house looks today.
- Mark Z. Danielewski

Architecture has been called inhabited sculpture, frozen music, and as 'forms assembled in the light.' We think of the grand buildings of each of our cultures, the bridges, museums, and opera houses, but it's also our homes, schools, and offices. Every building around us was designed to serve a purpose by enclosing space. Every architect must deal with the problems of lines and shapes, scale and dimension. These are the same issues that we face as photographers, but applied in three dimensions instead of two.

As with anything artistic, we all bring our own style and experience to photography. Architectural photography may be documentary, descriptive, interpretive -- anything we like is correct if there's no client to please. For this assignment, look at the way other people have solved the problem of dividing space, and the problems that you can solve to capture it.

Remember that architecture can be interiors as well as exteriors, and buildings as well as the environment that they're built in.

A couple of recent photos playing with angles and geometry in buildings...

The stairs to a subway station:



Street level exterior, which is actually a normal-looking building with right angles and square corners. It might have been just to play with the 7mm wide angle:

Both very nice shots Matthew. I especially like the movement in the 7-Eleven shot.

I love architectural photography. We took a trip to Nashville last year, and there is such a variety of architecture there.

The Country Music Hall of Fame


The Aquarium Restaurant


An old bank turned into a tattoo parlor


And this juxtaposition of various architectural styles in Downtown Nashville

Matthew, I like both pictures, but the first one is fantastic. I love the color and texture of the wall... Excellent picture and the composition too.

Aine, Very beautiful pictures too. The third one is great. I like your treatment. Your idea in the last one is also great, and I want to do something similar here.

I went to my pictures from Mexico because I wanted to post something out of the German buildings you know already.... I will go to take more architecture pictures, anyway when the weather let me do it.

This is the cathedral of Morelia. It was a pity I couldn't take these pictures a bit earlier. I wouldn't have hard contrast in the details.




In the same street the plaza is located and this is the kiosko in the center of the park. Here I was lucky to be earlier...




Still I have two more of the same place. I will post them when I get them ready.

Nice shots all!
Aine, I like the colors of your no. 2.
And the atmosphere of the kiosko, Irma! What time of the day did you take this? Looks like early evening?

Nice to see how many different pictures fit into this category.
Mat(thew!), your pics reminded me of some I took in Berlin when I was there recently. I like the old fashioned look of the subway stations a lot.


1


2


3


4

uli

... and one more from Berlin,

Architechture Old and New:

Hi Uli,

I have always been unsure whether you can take pictures in the subway or not. I like to see that there is no problem. Great pictures Uli, I see your intention on working with the lights in the ceiling. I like that, and it works really well!!
What lens and camera did you use for this series?

About the kiosko picture, yes it was in the early evening. I was invited by my sister's friends to have a coffee in the park, but I couldn't resist to go and take these pictures. As they gathered to have a coffee together I thought I had to be with them too, so I stopped for a while and then conitnued with the cathedral. Pity because at the time I took the cathedral picture it was already too dark.

Thank you for your comment Irma,.

I used the 350D with 50mm/1.4, which is sort of my light carry-around gear. That lense is fantastic.

I don't think taking picturs is a problem anywhere in Germany except clearly private and marked as such places.
It's not like in the states, and even there I have seen people take pictures in the subway.

Greetings! Uli

A few from my archive.
First, 2 from a trip to Florence(make sure you all try and get there at least once in a lifetime...): these are scans from my Pentax 67II with a 45mm lens(er, about 21mm, I think??)





Tewkesbury Abbey, some 30 miles from me: this time at full stretch with an old Nikkor 70-210 on 35mm(some grotty 400 ASA film: the Florence ones were on Fuji Reala: like most Fuji film/transparenccy, the recommended ASA was a bit ambitious, IMO)



Finally, some window reflections from London's dockland: scanned from 35mm T-Max at around 800ASA; Nikon F4S with the 70-210 at 150-ish. I still miss that camera: you could knock nails into wood with it if you were short of a hammer....:|...not that I did, of course...



It's about time I roved about more, I feel.

So many beautiful pictures. Matt - the first one is one of my favourite shots I have seen you post.

Zig, love those reflections!!
Uli

aine-caitlin, thanks. I like the final photo of all of the different styles put together. It may sound silly, but I really like the open window.

Irma, photography in the subway system isn't quite prohibited, but it's close. "Commercial" photography needs a permit, and since I was using a tripod, I'd probably be asked to move on. I try not to linger, keep and eye out for security cameras, and try not to annoy people. Being at least 200m away from the nearest transit employee helps, too. "Kisko" is a new word for me; I would have called it a gazebo or maybe a bandstand, but either way the light is fantastic.

Uli, I really like the colours in #4.

Zig, I'm with Uli on this one, the reflections are great. I also like the art vendor in the square, but might clone out (or monochrome out) the red hand truck.

WS, thanks, it's one of my all-time favourites already. I went back there just a couple of hours ago: the black graffiti is gone, the salt has been cleaned off of the floor, and it's just not as good a photo any more. I'm not sure if it shows -- I hope it doesn't -- but there's a lot of post-processing that went into getting the tones right.

Last summer it occurred to me just how much a city is known for its architecture. Here are some that people may recognize:

I’m really enjoying the photographs in this assignment. Aside from just getting a glimpse of all these different places, one of the things I’ve liked most about all of these is the sense of movement and interaction of people with the architectural subject – Matthew’s 7-Eleven shopper, Irma’s light trails, the people in Uli’s subway, people walking or waiting in Zig’s shots from Florence. Also, Zig, I like the way the artist’s mats mimic the panels in the building. And Matthew, it’s not silly that you like the open window – that’s something I really like about that shot too.

matthew Wrote:I would have called it a gazebo or maybe a bandstand,

both of them are new words to me!!


here is one of the new library of a small college's campus I visited today.
and in case you are wondering, it is not me or the camara producing mute colors,
it really is just so misty! (dust caught under a layer of clouds mixed with pollution...)



Greetings!

Uli

I was out again last night with my wide-angle and tripod, shamelessly trying to re-shoot my stairs photo from the beginning of this assignment. Naturally, it didn't work, so I went to the other side of the street at the same subway station. I'm happy to continue the subway and the movement themes for the assignment:



This is the entire frame with just a slight adjustment to the tones and white balance. Normally I'd correct the barrel distortion, but considering that the camera is as close to the wall as the tripod will get it, I'm pretty pleased with its performance.

I was meeting my girlfriend after her night class, and I've been admiring this building and wanting to take this photo for some time. Since I had a tripod, I decided to try it out instead of waiting for a better night with fresh snow. I only took the one frame, but am happy with it as a 'sketch' of what a better photo will look like. Again, this image is as straight-from-camera as I get; normally I'd remove the lens flare on the top right.



I was being a keener and carefully adjusting the focus point every time I reframed the scene. This morning I discovered that I had left the camera in manual focus mode. The good news is that at 7mm and f/8, when focused at infinity, my DOF was pretty much from the front element all the way to infinity. Lesson learned.

Matthew, that new subway shot is just great. you should make a series!! I love the person at the base of the stairs, great timing.

you guys have a lot of snow there!

Uli

My last one from Florence. I've deliberately not done a deal to correct the converging verticals of this 45mm or the rest of the distortion...which was considerable before the crop, as it's the equivalent of about 22mm-ish on 35mm. I used f22 here: on the original pic one can see shimmers in the grains of the stonework on the floor. I could even squeeze f.45 out of this lens: surprisingly useful for interesting movement effects...the edges got a bit woolly by then though.
The duomo is in the background; Giotto designed and built the campanile(bell-tower) on the right. Taken from across the Piazza San Giovanni, the closest(largest) building here is the baptistry. I could see the man stepping into shot, which helped me keep the shadow area for effect.

Zig Wrote:That works matthew. I agree: this is a really interesting assignment(you've done this before, haven't you?)

I'm surprised that it took me this long to think of the subject, since I've liked architectural photography for years. The bad news is that it's about the last good idea I'm expecting to have; the next assignment will be to photograph different Wheel of Fortune phrases.

Zig Wrote:... he's being stared at by Crassus, I think..dunno who the other dude is. This was a tricky shot as I remember, so as to get them all "animated" enough to look at each other in some kind of a composition.

It works -- nicely done. Although the jokes....

Uli, I'm planning on visiting some more subways' stairwells tomorrow. There actually aren't that many that have the right combination of access and low traffic, but I've been lucky so far. And there has been a lot of snow this year -- we haven't had the cold that keeps the snow away, and we haven't had the warm rains that melts it all. It's been alright, but last year was better. There were light snowfalls every couple of days that kept everything looking clean and fresh.

Matthew,
Your wide angle pictures have been always so inspiring to me... and when I got out with my 24mm and imagine your pictures, I feel so constrain, limited... Could it be that is time to consider a super wide angle lens? I'll think about it... I like the most recent pictures...

Zig, Your series from Florence is fascinating, and reminds me so much my trip to Toscana few years back. We didn't visit Florence but Siena, and many other little towns in the region.

Uli, now I understand the reason of your muted colors.... and I appreciate very much that you stick with the mood of the environment. I would have messed with colors in photoshop ...
I like very much the way you composed your picture, btw.

Ah yes, Irma; I'd really wanted to include Siena too(along with another 2 weeks in Florence!) and also Ravenna to the north...I hope I'll do this one day...

Irma, thanks. Perhaps Zig's new 16-35 is in your future?

Here's an older photo, which I'm sure I've posted before, but it's one of my favourites and one of the first I took with my 7-14.

Florence/Firenza is a beautiful old city. On my first and only visit, we arrived very late in the evening, and being summer it was very hot. Me and my wife stripped off and threw the shutters open and dropped on the bed and fell asleep. Naked of course. Next morning we took in our first view of Florence. We overlooked roofs and backs of buildings. We then looked at our balcony :/ It turned out to be a shared one and the next room was also occupied. I don't know if he saw more than he bargained for.
My pics in those days were more cine than camera.

We went yesterday to Luebeck. I took some pictures of the church.

These are details from the outside.

Irma, I love what you did to the colors in these! Especially no2, 3 is nice also. the last one works the least for me.

they look like from a ferry tale.

uli