Shooting skills of street style

Different cities have different street customs. The following are the shooting techniques of street customs I shared. Let's have a look.

Framework and composition of urban architecture

Because the building is motionless, it is particularly important to choose the shooting point for framing and composition. The shooting point should be conducive to the performance of the space, level and environment of the building. Space is the main body of the building, and the level is to show the change and depth of space, while the environment is not only to set off the building and create an atmosphere, but also an indispensable part of the building itself.

Choose the right focal length

Shooting buildings with different focal lengths will produce different image effects. A 50mm focal length lens is called a standard lens, and the photos it takes, like vision, can best reflect the objectivity of things. Based on this focal length, the longer the focal length, the worse the perspective effect. The shorter the focal length of the lens (28mm or 16mm), the greater the deformation of the building, but the perspective effect is good, which can better represent the depth of the picture and obtain a wide range of clarity.

Application of shooting skills

Generally speaking, vertical picture shooting helps to show the grandeur of buildings or the depth of streets, while banner picture shooting can better show the forests of buildings. Most buildings have countless different angles, different surfaces, different postures and different characteristics for cameras to shoot. When walking around the building of interest, carefully observe the details of the building in the usual line of sight, find the smooth and harmonious features of the building, find ways to empty these features within the scope of framing, or show them in a more personalized way.

Combining different shooting angles with light perfectly, an ordinary house can definitely be photographed as a very professional architectural picture. When taking architectural photography, it is best to deal with the volume and geometric proportion of the building according to the designer's plan-the vertical line in the photo should also be vertical. These lines will converge when the camera lens is facing up. The closer the photographer stands to the building, the more obvious this effect will be. You can exaggerate this effect with a wide-angle lens, and the effect is very strong.

Wide-angle lens is used to photograph the internal structure of buildings, while telephoto lens can also separate houses or buildings from the background and emphasize a certain detail. There are two attractive angles: extremely low camera position and fisheye angle. Any extreme horizontal or vertical shooting angle can take amazing photos.

The appearance shooting of residential buildings mainly depends on natural light. Therefore, the correct use of natural light is very important. Different light changes have different modeling effects on buildings. As a photographer who concentrates on shooting architecture, he needs to grasp buildings with different textures, different surfaces and different structures. For example, the color effects of glass houses and earth buildings are different. According to the observation results, we can choose the best time to express architectural color: early morning, afternoon or dusk.

Understand natural light

Architecture relies on its own three-dimensional space to express its own three-dimensional space, and when using plane photos to express its three-dimensional space, it will rely on light and shadow to a certain extent. The correct use of light refers to controlling the direction, intensity and quality of light, which should not only show the texture of the light-receiving surface material, but also show the depth of the shadow depression without losing the details of the depression.

From the point of view of the photographic light of buildings, the forward light (front light) or semi-side light is often used, which is beneficial to express the specific details of high-rise buildings; The front light makes the building have a great contrast between light and shade, showing a three-dimensional effect. Most of the external walls of modern buildings are embedded with glass, which is dazzling. In order to reproduce the details clearly, a polarizer should be installed in front of the camera to eliminate the reflection of the glass.

Standard light refers to the side light at 45 degrees to the front of the building, but when the exterior wall is decorated with modern buildings such as glass materials, the angle of light should be grasped flexibly, so as to avoid strong reflected light, show the texture of material reflection, and make the surrounding scenery reflected by its surface not destroy the theme. Backlight can't show the details of the building, but it does help to show the beautiful outline of the building, while top light and flat light (that is, positive light) will make the building lack three-dimensional sense. Sometimes special light such as morning light and sunset can be used to bring colorful light and shadow effects to the works.

On a clear day, if you want to show the pattern form of a certain side of the building or a certain local detail of the building, you can choose to shoot along the light; If you want to show the outline of the building. The best architectural silhouette should be taken in the early morning and dusk, when the scenery in the sky will add a strong atmosphere to the picture; Cloudy days are also a good time to photograph the appearance of buildings. At this time, the scattered light has no obvious directionality, and the light is soft, which is conducive to showing the whole picture and details of the building. Sometimes, high-profile works can be shot by using this light.

The appearance shooting of residential buildings mainly depends on natural light. Therefore, the correct use of natural light is very important. Different light changes have different modeling effects on buildings. On a clear day, if you want to show the pattern form of a certain side of the building or a certain local detail of the building, you can choose to shoot along the light; If you want to show the outline of the building. The best architectural silhouette should be taken in the early morning and dusk, when the scenery in the sky will add a strong atmosphere to the picture; Cloudy days are also a good time to photograph the appearance of buildings. At this time, the scattered light has no obvious directionality, and the light is soft, which is conducive to showing the whole picture and details of the building. Sometimes, high-profile works can be shot by using this light.

Frame method

An excellent building (or building) must have a beautiful architectural environment. When shooting urban buildings, we should pay special attention to avoid the interference of neighboring buildings, wires, billboards and other things unrelated to the theme, and find shooting points that can fully express the buildings in order to obtain satisfactory composition results. Sometimes, in order to highlight the theme, you can deliberately use other buildings as a foil when framing and composing, but you must pay attention to the perspective relationship between the theme building and other buildings, and you can't pretend to be the owner. When shooting buildings, high-angle framing can better express the spatial layering of buildings.

When shooting urban buildings, whether shooting a single building or a group of buildings, in order to find the best shooting viewpoint, the photographer must consider all possible viewpoints around the building in advance and lock in one or two representative viewpoints that can make urban buildings attractive and personalized for key shooting. In order to get the ideal effect when shooting, the method of raising the viewpoint can be adopted to avoid the deformation of the main building caused by the inclination or prone position of the shooting viewpoint. Usually, a high viewpoint is more convenient to fully display the environment around the ground or water surface of modern buildings, which makes the vision in the picture wider. When shooting, we should also pay attention to choosing soft front light to reduce the contrast between light-colored buildings and dark environment, so that the film will be harmonious and perfect.

If the space inside and outside the building is crowded, wide-angle lens (sometimes moving lens or angle adjusting lens) will play a very important role, which can include all the subjects in the picture. Usually, a detail or a distinctive feature of a building will often attract your attention. In order to record this detail or feature, a telephoto lens may help solve the problem. For narrow indoor lighting (or a small part of a large room), hand-held flash is very useful, but it must also be used for fast film and long-term exposure, which requires tripod or other camera stabilization devices.

Rational use of shadows

Since photography is "painting with light", shadows that cannot be illuminated by light must be an important aspect in the process of painting. Although people often ignore the role of shadow in photography creation, or even deliberately avoid it, it is still a vivid element in many photographic works, which is more important for architectural photography.

The first step in learning to use shadows is to strengthen the awareness of paying attention to shadows until it becomes a habit, and learn to distinguish interesting shadows that may become part of a work from those that will distract the audience and ruin a good photo. In photography, the eyes usually only pay attention to the interesting points of the subject and ignore the existence of shadows. In addition, the amplitude of light intensity felt by human eyes is much larger than that felt by any film. Therefore, under normal exposure, the shadows in photos are generally darker than the actual shadows, and there will be shadows that you have not noticed. Therefore, it is very important to learn to realize the shadow and its effect on the subject in advance.

The nature of shadow depends on the nature of light. Scattering of light on cloudy days forms diffuse light. The shadows produced by this light energy are very soft, inconspicuous and sometimes even difficult to detect. Therefore, the subject often lacks the three-dimensional sense and sense of space given by shadows. On the contrary, the hard and bright shadows produced by direct light (including direct sunlight, flash lamp or light directly emitted by tungsten lamp) have obvious edges, which are in sharp contrast with the bright parts of buildings in the afternoon. In this case, beautiful modeling or realism can often be obtained.

Generally speaking, the shadow is the longest in the morning and evening. If you shoot at this time, you can often get an exaggerated and distorted effect. It would be better to find a higher viewpoint when shooting. The stronger the sunshine, the darker the shadow and the stronger the effect. Black shadows can produce the strongest and most vivid picture form because of the lack of details that can easily distract people's attention. Strong and directional shadows, if used as elements to balance the picture or enhance the perspective structure, will play a major role in picture composition.

Large shadows on the screen sometimes produce unexpected charm. It is very effective to use bright shadow areas when shooting scenes with messy and inevitable foreground. Sometimes, in order to shoot a newly completed building, it is suddenly found that the foreground area is full of debris that cannot be removed, such as construction machinery and old scaffolding. At this time, you can choose the moment when the building is illuminated by strong sunlight and the foreground is in a dark shadow. This bright shadow helps to hide all the distracting details. Remember to take an accurate exposure reading from the strong light area when exposing, so that the details in the shadow will not be displayed because of insufficient exposure. Whether in the morning or evening, the shape produced by the relatively low direct sunlight in the sky is very beneficial to architectural photography. The shadow produced by this light can not only show the shape of the building, but also show the texture of the building. When there is no shadow in the sky, architectural photographers generally don't take pictures, because the photos taken at this time are definitely boring.

Architectural photography doesn't have to shoot magnificent buildings. The street scenes and houses we usually see can be the objects of architectural photography. The key is to have good colors and unique angles. Sometimes, black and white photos can also express another architectural photography effect-especially suitable for shooting old buildings.

Shooting street scenes is also a part of residential architecture photography. Streets and alleys are the windows of a region and a city. Through this window, we can see the present situation, development and changes of this place, as well as the unique local customs. The landscape in the streets and lanes is rich and colorful, but it is also complicated. What is worth shooting and what is not worth shooting depends on your eyes.

Be good at finding extraordinary features in ordinary streets and lanes. Think in observation, observe in thinking. The observation contents include: street building types, house layout, street scenery feelings. There are streets and lanes in every area, but the streets and lanes are different and have their own characteristics. When you find the differences, you find the characteristics. For example, the white-walled and black-tiled stone road in the ancient city of Jiangnan, the small bridges and stone steps in the water city of Jiangnan, the hutongs in Beijing and the small streets in the border villages are all unique scenery in these places. With a typical landscape, there must be a unique plot. With the plot, the picture will move and live, and the streets will not form "empty lanes" and "dead lanes" in the photos. Only when scenery and emotion meet in some places can interesting works with folk characteristics be formed.