Portfolio review
Loui Sidlovszky draws on his training in landscape and documentary photography to capture towering architecture
The experts advise one reader on taking his photography to the city limits
My first camera was a Nikon F80. In 2002 I travelled around Egypt and felt I needed to learn more about photography, so the following year I went on a landscape photography course. I returned to study in 2006 and learned about black and white documentary photography. Ironically, it was at this point that I started using digital cameras.
My first D-SLR was the D70s, which I used for shooting sport events, but recently I returned to landscape and have tried architecture photography, which draws on my previous studies. Because I’m shooting more frequently now, I upgraded to a Nikon D800, which gives me much greater control over the details when shooting architecture. I am very much still learning architectural photography.
In 2015 I had the opportunity to travel to Dubai. It seems to me that the only things that people associate Dubai with are sandy beaches and the lit-up
skyscrapers at night, and I wanted to shoot something different [1].
I really love the lines that architectural photography can produce, so I spend a lot of time photographing in London. In bigger cities most people seem to walk along with their heads down, and no-one notices the miracles above their head. I turn my camera upwards and photograph what’s always there, but
In bigger cities most people seem to walk along with their heads down, and no-one notices the miracles above their heads
hardly anyone sees. I try to combine this perspective with a longer shutter to capture the movement in the clouds above the buildings.
N-Photo says
Loui, your photos are a good demonstration that when you put your mind to photographing something, you can come away with great results. It’s very encouraging for our readers to see that studying photography pays off.
Your Dubai shot [1] combines several compositional techniques, which we’re very impressed with. The first technique that most photographers learn about is the rule of thirds – breaking up your image into thirds and placing points of interest along one or more of these lines or line intersections. The pinnacle of the Burj Khalifa is framed by the window you’re shooting through, and both the central part of the skylight and the Burj itself fall roughly on thirds, which we think is actually rather clever. The Burj Khalifa towers 828 metres high, and fitting
that height in a horizontal frame can be difficult, to say the least, unless you go super wide-angle or walk miles away. Using the window as a frame really works well, as it enables you to cut out a lot of the Burj Khalifa in a creative fashion, while showing the viewer enough of the building to be able to identify it. The circle at the centre of the skylight at the top left of the frame balances the visual weight of the Burj Khalifa.
Your shots taken in London are strong as well. The one looking up at the space where three buildings meet
[2] again shows brilliant skill in balancing visual weight, and a creative approach to framing. It would have been quite easy to aim the camera straight up, get the buildings perfectly straight and level across the frame, and take the shot, but here you’ve tilted the frame to make a diagonal path of sky from the top-left to bottom-right, which makes the shot more dynamic as the viewer’s eye ‘slides’ down that diagonal. The angle also makes us think of the roads and paths beneath the buildings – it clearly shows where you can walk through, but with a simple sky backdrop. It might be interesting to see this photo taken at a longer shutter speed to blur out the stray cloud that was there, but it looks like there weren’t enough clouds on the day to do this. Overall, some very impressive architectural shots. Your studies have certainly paid off.
The Burj Khalifa towers 828 metres high… Using the window as a frame really works well, as it enables you to cut out a lot of the Burj Khalifa