attempting to work with a back- lighting set-up.
Camera alignment is critical.
Take photos squarely at the tar- get to produce artwork that rep- resents the buildings in distant, straight-on views. Position your- self at a distance, well back from the front of the building, oppo- site the midpoint along the front face, i.e. at the centerline. Hold the camera such that the axis of the lens is horizontal. Most digital cameras have an option to display an alignment grid as an aid for architectural photography. Check the camera’s instructions for this feature. It may be helpful. Tipping the camera right, left, up, or down to include the entire building will result in a distorted image. The edges of the building will taper vertically inward or will be wedge-shaped horizontally. The result: unrealistic-looking prints unusable as artwork. When the camera is in the correct posi- tion, approximately the lower half of the frame will be foreground. The first editing step is to crop away that extra foreground. Take several shots from each camera position. Although the dif- ferences may be slight, improve- ment from one frame to the next may be noticeable. Experiment with exposure settings and choose the best.
When it is not possible to cap- ture the entire front of the build- ing in one frame, plan to splice multiple images. Many cameras have a “panoramic” utility to align a series of shots for later merging. Usually, a faint ghost of a portion of the previous photo is retained in the viewfinder. The next shot is lined up to overlap the ghost im- age. Take each shot with the cam- era at the same distance from the building. Some editing programs can digitally “merge” or “stitch” the individual pictures and save the result in one photo file. How- ever, it may be more expedient to combine photos in hard copy via the traditional physical “cut and paste” method.
Distortion A tapered distortion happens when aiming the camera skyward to capture tall structures. To avoid this problem, position the camera at the center of the building and keep the axis of the lens horizontal. Moving back from the building and using a telephoto lens will also help.
Correction A retake of the church photo with the camera correctly “squared” to eliminate distortion. The unwanted foreground and sides will be cropped away.
JULY 2015 73
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