by Lesley Rigg

Created on: June 16, 2009   Last Updated: June 17, 2009

If you are continually fascinated by angles, shape and form and enjoy repeating patterns in the world around you, the chances are that even if you don't already know it, you are an architectural photographer.

Architectural photography spans a wide range of different types of building, and built environment. Architectural photography spans, details, benches, doors, public light fittings, domestic homes, landmarks, monuments and ruins. There are practically no boundaries bar the fact that the element being photographed needs to come from the built world rather than the natural one.

There are three important areas to remember when photographing the built environment or architecture. These are sharp detail, uncluttered sympathetic backgrounds and perhaps most importantly of all perspective. Many architectural photographers will use wide angle lenses, this is categorised as anything under 27 mm, but often 10-20 mm would be a lens that architectural photographers would favour.

That is not to say that you cannot take pictures with wider angles, 35mm, and 50 can be used, however if you wish to take pictures in crowded environments and get broad expanses of the element being shot, then these work better. Also 10-20 mm will give you the perspective you require, as when you are using wider angle lenses you can get distortion from looking up at your subject and the walls, etc, may appear to be bowed inwards.

This can be addressed in post-processing to a certain extent through an editing suite such as Photoshop, which allows you to adjust the perspective. Alternatively you can buy perspective filters to do the same job.

Detail is another vital area in architectural photography. What you choose to have in sharp focus, and what is blurred away into the distance is vital in this kind of photography. Anything central or important to your shot should be in sharp focus. Generally speaking if you have a digital camera either set it to the landscape or architecture setting, or set your aperture to approximately f8 in order to get a good deal of the building in focus.

However, blurring distracting backgrounds, or ugly elements such as drain-pipes is often useful and careful positioning of your shot and composition can do much to deal with these types of elements. When you get your pictures onto the PC you want to see the impressive balustrade, or turrets, or sash windows in clear detail without the trash can next to it, or people wandering around to one side of

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