When I first started architectural photography, I only made photographs that strictly adhered to rectilinear perspectives--single point and two point perspectives where the verticals are perfectly vertical in all photographs, and the horizontals are perfectly horizontal in single point perspectives. Here’s an example from the La Brea Tar Pits Museum in Los Angeles.
Single point perspective photograph of the La Brea Tar Pits Museum, Los Angeles, CA
I never tilted the camera to look up at a building or down into a large interior space below, for example. I considered this rule #1 in architectural photography: the verticals must be vertical!
I was missing something with that strict approach to perspective control. If there are any rules in photography, then yes, this would be rule #1 in architectural photography, which is a very technical genre that demands attention to detail. Architects design buildings with straight lines (mostly), and contractors build faithfully to those specifications. Proper, rectilinear architectural photographs are therefore always important to make, and they represent the majority of the work I deliver to clients.
But there really are no rules in photography, and sometimes a few unconventional perspectives can help round out a set of architectural images. In the photograph below, I’ve thrown the rules of proper architectural photography out the window. I’ve highlighted one of the details of the building, and I’ve pointed the camera at an odd angle. The verticals are decidedly not vertical in this image.
Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Las Vegas, NV
In photographs like the one above and the one below, I’ve created an abstraction. I’m no longer treating the building as a full piece of architecture but rather as a subject where I can explore artistic possibilities. I’m finding abstract details, shapes, and patterns hidden in the architecture and turning them into full blown pieces of art--art that may get lost and ignored in the straight-ahead, rectilinear, proper architectural photographs of the building.
UPMC Tower, Pittsburgh, PA
In fact I’ve only scratched the surface here. Artists such as Hélène Binet and Judith Turner have been making artistic images of the abstract details of architecture and design for years. As primarily a commercial photographer, however, my main motivation is to emphasize and explore the details of the design rather than to focus entirely on the artistry of the image for its own sake. In other words, for me it’s more about the architecture than the photograph of the architecture. That’s not to say that these other artists are focused solely on the art of the photograph, but I do think it can be easy for photographers like me to get carried away and to lose sight of the end client and the ultimate purpose of the photographs. So I always use these kinds of photographs only as a supplement to the primary work I do.
Crystals Mall at Citycenter, Las Vegas, NV
Vespertine, Culver City, CA
These photographs are not only a lot of fun to make, but they are useful to my clients as well. My clients certainly need and expect formal, proper architectural photographs, but these more unconventional images can make their work come alive in different ways for them. And sometimes a nice abstract image can make the perfect web banner or letterhead in a marketing brochure, so it’s very beneficial to my clients to get these kinds of images in addition to standard architectural photographs.
I started to rethink my strict approach several years ago when I saw a photograph by Ezra Stoller of the John Hancock Building in Chicago (here’s a link to it). His composition was similar to what you see below in my photograph of the US Steel Building (UPMC Tower) in Pittsburgh, PA. This unorthodox perspective tells a story. It exaggerates the height of the building and makes it a much more imposing-looking structure. This story is lost in more standard perspectives.
UPMC Tower, Pittsburgh, PA
When I saw this and other non-rectilinear photographs by Stoller, I decided if it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. I started to play around with different compositions and perspectives in both my commissioned work and personal projects, and it opened up a whole new world of possibilities and enjoyment for me.
As a working architectural photographer, my primary job is to produce the proper, rectilinear photographs that architects and designers expect. I bring artistry to those photographs, and I love making them; but I now also enjoy loosening things up and producing some additional images that are less structured. These photographs might break some of the “rules” of architectural photography, but in so doing they tell a whole new story of the building.