Great Ways You Can Photograph Tall Buildings

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High rise photography is an emotive type of photography that expresses the incredible achievements of human engineering and our place in that new and growing world. Only 100 hundred years ago most people on the planet would never even have seen a photograph of, yet alone a real, high rise building in their entire lives! Today, they are an increasingly common part of our cities and as a result they have been a magnet for photographers trying to capture their hulking magnificence and our relationship to them.

There are many challenges involved in taking great pictures of any high rise building, whether that’s in the Center City Philadelphia, New York City or any other location; but with good technique, and a clear idea of how to go about taking the pictures, you will be able to come away with stunning results.

A Quick Step by Step Guide so You can take Outstanding Photographs of High Rise Buildings from up close on the ground.

• Firstly, take your time to select the perfect building for your subject. Look for interesting architectural features such as balconies, arches, curves or interesting textures and patterned work on the building’s façade. If the high rise building has a lot of glass in it’s design, which is fairly common, then remember that this will add light, reflections and potential interest to your photography.

• Notice what the clouds in the sky are doing! If there are clouds in the sky it will add depth, feeling and movement to the finished product. Clouds can also be used to add to the extreme perspectives you can achieve by photographing the high rise from up close. Usually clouds that are moving either directly towards you or away from you in the photograph create a more dramatically intense feeling than if the clouds are running sideways across the image.

• Whenever possible use a tripod to stand your camera on. For the most powerful images it is often advised that you should set the shutter speed to a slower setting, although this will also depend on the lighting conditions that you are working with. This will allow you to capture the movement of the clouds while keeping the building in crystal clear focus.

• When you are deciding where to set up your photograph from it is generally a good idea to pick one of the building’s corners. This creates a sharp relief in the foreground and the sense of the building falling away on either side. As well as this the corner’s of high rise buildings often have more obviously visible features which will add points of attention for your audience when they view the photograph.

• Don’t be afraid to experiment with manual focus on your camera. It might be a little confusing at first but you’ll soon master it! In this way you can create strong fields of depth that will really draw in the eye of your audience and allow you far more control over what the finished product will be.

Once you have got some great photographs it can be fun, effective and usually well worth playing around with some filters and post production programs, many of which you can get for free online, for both camera phones and laptops.

Pro Tips to Supercharge your High Rise Photography.

• Consider the time of day that you want to photograph your subject, the high rise, in. Night time photography will have a completely different feel to the day, so ask yourself if you want to express the night lights, with lit up windows and interesting colors, or, if you want to focus more on the contrast between the moving clouds and the solid building’s structure, then a day time shot would be better. Early evening is a nice compromise between the two, where you can still see the clouds but many of the buildings are already lit up!

• You can use Google Maps, and other free online software, to explore potential locations in advance. You can also use the compass on the maps to determine where the sun will be at different times of the day, i.e. to the West in the evening and the East in the morning. This will help you choose your subject in advance and know where the light will be coming from, but that said, many photographers just prefer to get out there and decide on location.

• If you’re wanting to sell your work, it can be a good idea to select well known buildings that people will already be familiar with, and then, using your creativity and imagination, portray them in an interesting or unusual new way!

Taking photos of high rise buildings from up close is an extremely powerful art form.

High Rise Photography is an Expressive, Powerful and Fascinating art form, but it comes with its own unique challenges and problems. However these challenges can really bring out the best in you, boost your creativity and give you the chance to produce some truly unique images.

Do you like taking photos of tall buildings?

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