Architecture

Embarcadaro Ferry Building in San Francisco, California

"Ghost Buster" builidng in San Francisco, California

St. Patrick's Church in San Francisco, Califronia

Door of St. Patrick's Church in San Francisco, California

Stairs inside St. Patrick's Church San Francisco, California

Classic: Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was born on February 20, 1902 and died on April 22, 1984 from San Francisco, California. He was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known or his black-and-white photographs of the American West and especially his Yosemite National Park photographs.Adams' interest in photography grew and often brought him up to the mountains accompanied by a mule laden with photographic gear and supplies.


His images were first used for environmental purposes when the Sierra Club was seeking the creation of a nation park in the Kings River region of the Sierra Nevada. He created a limited-edition book, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, which influenced both Interior Secretary Harold Ickes and president Franklin Roosevelt to embrace the Kings Canyon Park idea. 

I like this picture because I thought it looked pretty cool. I feel like black and white gives the photograph more value. Plus this photographer probably would have to kind of close and kind of far to get this landscape. Also to even get the clouds or fog in the image makes it feel more dramatic.

 

Blog Notes pg. 202-217

Landscapes

• 3 main types of landscapes

- landscape photography through the wide views

- use close-up to capture landscape details

- create abstract images of the landscape that accentuate form, texture, and pattern

Landmarks in Landscape Photography

• emphasize elements and principles of a scene
• edges of frame and focus are key
• rule of thirds
• lighting, either warm or cool, and shooting at specific times of day will improve images
• 100 ISO will help give more details-tripods will help

Ansel Adams (1902-1984)

- 14yrs old when he first went to Yosemite

- went back later and took his best-known images there

- tried to capture experience of being in wilderness

Photographing the Landscape

Thinking Artistically

• composition is one of the most important aspects of landscape photography and viewpoint is the most important part of composition
• value--> an image's light and dark areas is especially important in black and white landscape photography
• balance between unity and variety
• unity- when all the individual parts of your image come together and support each other to make one cohesive image
• variety- refers to all the diverse art elements found in a picture

Camera Settings

• max. depth of field f/16, f/22, f/32
• for large format cameras f/64 (smallest f-stop)

Light 

• after sunrise and just before sunset
• easier to deal with direct lighting for distant subjects than it is for closer subjects
• Grand Landscape photographs- direct lighting creates the highlights and shadows that make a landscape seem three-dimensional

Film

• use 100 ISO with 35mm capture all the details

Lenses

• landscape photographers prefer to use wide-angle lenses that capture more of the scene
• concentrating on details or areas in the distance, like one mountain in a range of mountains, some photographers use a telephoto lens

Filters

• big part of landscape 
• at least a yellow filter, just to bring out the clouds

Camera Support

• when combine slow films and small f-stops (f/16-f/22) slow shutter speeds = going to need tripod to support camera so you will get sharp images

The Grand Landscape

• grand landscape- "big view" 
• great outdoors-wide-open expanses that showcase the majesty of the natural world
• you can also select non-traditional subjects
• wide-angle to normal lens, create some Grand Landscape photographs that include sky

Landscape Details and Close-ups

• parks are a good source of subject matter for detail- oriented photograph, with interesting trees, well groomed lawns and meadows, and beautiful lakes
• light meters are designed to create an exposure that makes medium or middle gray out of the scene being metered

Abstracted Elements in the Landscape

• abstracted elements are images composed of lines, shapes, values, and textures
• best ways to turn an ordinary scene into an abstract image is to get really close to your subject and photograph only a small part of it
• macro lens on small subjects, you'll need as much depth of field as possible
• trees are great subjects for exploring abstracted images

Blog Notes pg.190-197

The Big View

• big view- wide-angle, overall view
• perspective distortion appears as strong converging lines in a build, where the sides of the building angle in toward each other instead of looking parallel as they are in reality
• shoot straight forward- flat and two-dimensional view
• if position yourself a bit to side and wait until the front is side-lit, photograph will reveal better textures, forms, and shadows
• shooting from side- three-dimensional view--> reveals depth as well as height and width

Shadows

• make interesting subject all by themselves
• lines, shapes, and values of an object's shadow 

The Detail Shot

• detail shot- features the individual architectural elements of building's interior or exterior
• becomes indirect portraits of craftspeople who made them
• to capture most likely need a telephoto lens so that you can stand at street level and ero in on intriguing element

Interior Views

• record overall shots of whole rooms, or you can focus on smaller details
• exterior- provide indirect portraits of the creators of buildings, then interior images can be seen as concentrating on the presence of the people who live in and use those rooms
• when taking detail pictures- need to think about depth of field and the f-stop on your lens
• most architectural interiors look better when nearly everything in picture is focus, requires greater depth of field
• for interiors you'll be as close as 4ft. or as far away as 20ft--> stop aperture down to somewhere between f/11 and f/22
• closer you are to subject the more depth of field you'll need so set higher f-stop

Blog Notes pg.179-189

Architecture and Urban Landscapes

• pictures of buildings and homes in your neighborhoods, towns, and cities you create indirect portraits of people who live in them
• can be formal or informal
• people use elements of art and principles of design, created the buildings that make up or cities and towns

Looking Back

• beginning architecture was a popular subject for photographers
• Charles Negre

- artist and painter
- intended to se photographs as "sketches" for his painting but focused all his attention on his photography from that point on

• Frederick H. Evans

-one of the greatest architecture photographers in the history of architectural photography
-large part of work focused on cathedrals in London
-depicted emotion with the use of light
-"try for a record of emotion rather than a piece photography"


Photographing the Built Environment
Thinking Artistically

• focus on the full-view of space and emotions connected to it (portrait)
• details of buildings/abstract
• personailty and relationship to surrounds
• pattern- repetition of any of the elements of art, usually a part of every image

Camera Settings

• for 35mm f/11 to f/22
• for large format cameras like 4x5 f/35 to f/64
• slow films (100 ISO or less)

Film

• black/white or color
• color- emphasize color and settings
• b/w emphasize values, shapes, and texture

Lighting

• important in interior architectural photography
• incandescent light is slight more orange
• quartz- yellow
• fluorescent-greener
• daylight- lot more blue in it

Lenses

• using wide-angle lenses- wider the lens the more distortion you get

Camera Support

• tripods always have balance portability and stability
• monopods, single-legged camera supports, might work for walking around and shooting details but they won't work for interior photographs

Filters

• sky and clouds form uniform light gray shape
• polarizer darken a blue sky to increase the separation between clouds and sky- reduce or eliminate reflections in shiny nonmetallic surfaces

Architecture Lecture

• big picture, detail, interior
• Architectural photgraphs are indirect
• Materials, style and scale rpovide clues about who the people were and what their lives were like
• early films were notoriously shlow and needed hours of exposure for one image
• architecture was a perfect subject because:

-doesn't move
-change angles
-designs of buildings
-same elements and principles are in architecture as well as in photographs

• Frederick H. Evans

-one of the greatest architecture photographers in the history of architectural photography
-large part of work focused on cathedrals in London
-depicted emotion with the use of light
-"try for a record of emotion rather than a piece photography"

• worked primarily in platinum papers
• duringWWI, platinum was used exclusively for making bombs and munitions
• gave up photograpy when platinum was to hard to get

• Ezra Stoller (1915-2004)

-was an architect than became interested in photography
-used mostly line, shape, and form

• focus on the full-view of the space and the emotions connected to it, like a portrait
• tells a story
• focus on the details of a building, as an exploration of abstract images
• communicate the PERSONALITY o the space and its RELATIONSHIP to its surroundings
• in architectural photography, patterns dominate almost every part of the image

Photography Video

• Daily News is the oldest newspaper in the United States
• Want the biggest and most interesting picture on the front the paper to attract readers to buy it
• They used lots of photographs that were staged
• Daily News photographer would strap a camera to his ankle to take pictures serectly
• Without photographs adverstisment would be hard
• People liked photographs more than drawings because it seemed more true
• Photography made objects look more diserable
• Brought people to know more what celebrities do on their own time/personal life
• The more pictures there were of a person the more famous they became
• Sell that regular people can be like a celebrity- can relate to them
• Photography neutralize the effect of what to see
• You can see more detail in a photo compared to the naked eye the exposure is not as clear