Shoot the urban landscape with your camera
From skyscrapers and street signs to reflections and symmetry, there’s a lot to train your lens on in the city. Here are some tips to make the most of your time
Taking pictures in cities and towns can be incredibly satisfying, thanks to the architect-designed nature of the place. Clean lines, symmetry, bold colours and the contrast between the old and the new can all be used to build interesting scenics, abstracts and vignettes of urban life.
You don’t need a lot of kit, either. A standard zoom lens – such as 24-105mm on a full-frame camera, or the APS-C equivalent – will give you just enough reach at either end of the scale to capture everything from wide skylines to building details. Add an ultra-wide lens and a longer telephoto lens to expand your creative options, although travelling light with a single zoom will be easier on your shoulders and make it easier to be more spontaneous rather than spending time considering which lens would be better for a particular subject.
In some situations it can be a little daunting to bring your camera up to your eye if there’s a risk of security guards approaching to see what you’re up to – or even attempt to prevent you from taking pictures. If you’re on public land, then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about, but it’s worth bearing in mind that a lot of private property isn’t clearly marked. It can sometimes be hard to discern where the division between the two lies, and know when you’ve literally crossed the line. With this in mind, it pays to be cautious and courteous, but confident when you’re sure of your rights.
Marcus Hawkins Photographer and writer Marcus is a former editor of DigitalCamera
Using a tripod is likely to attract more attention. Setting one up in a busy street could be classed as an obstruction in the UK, for which you can be asked to move by the police, and ultimately arrested and fined if you do not. Even worse is the possibility of someone tripping on one of the tripod legs and injuring themselves. Buddying up with another photographer can be a good idea, as one of you can watch out for pedestrians while the other takes their shots. If you’re heading into a city centre though, it may be worth just leaving the tripod at home.
It can be challenging to know where to start when you’re faced with a bustling urban environment. I generally begin by looking for simple lines and shapes, whether that’s the negative space created by buildings against the sky, or the rigid patterns in the structures of the buildings themselves. Shooting symmetry can also be a good starting point, although it’s not quite as straightforward as it sounds. If you’re not square to the subject when you take the shot, then you may have to do apply some lens corrections in software to shift the vertical and horizontal aspect. This can mean the image ends up being cropped and you lose detail at the edges. So it pays to check that you’re
It can be challenging to know where to start… you could begin by looking for simple lines and shapes
dead centre with the subject and that the camera is as level as possible.
When you’re photographing buildings, you’ll often have the camera tilted upwards, which can lead to the keystone effect – where the structure appears to narrow at the top. Converging verticals are more obvious when you’re shooting with a wide-angle lens, because you’ll typically be standing closer to a building than you are with a telephoto lens. Again, you can use the lens correction tools in your editing software to push and pull the image in order to straighten the building somewhat, although this can require substantial manipulation and cropping. Besides, leaving some tilt can look more natural. If you’re serious about architecture, then investing in a tilt-shift lens, which can correct converging verticals at the shooting stage, is something to weigh up.
The time of day that you shoot is another consideration. If you’re at a location for sunrise then you’ll have more freedom when it comes to composing shots with no people or traffic in them. At other times of the day, you can use a Neutral Density filter to create a long exposure that makes moving objects essentially disappear from a scene – although you’ll need to find some
Use the lens correction tools in your editing software to push and pull the image, and straighten the building
way of supporting the camera when exposures run into multiple seconds.
On a clear and sunny day, the light during the early morning and late afternoon will be softer than it is in the middle of the day, which can make it easier to achieve more balanced exposures. The strong light around midday creates bright highlights and hard shadows, which can leave images looking rather stark. While this type of light isn’t great for portraits, you can take advantage of this characteristic to give your urban shots an edge. Set an exposure to retain details in the highlights and allow the shadows to become solid, ink-black shapes that can be used to add structure. Finding an elevated position that allows you to shoot down on a subject or scene can help at this time of day, too.
Shooting in black and white is also a good option when you’re faced with high-contrast lighting (and even when you’re not). Shoot in raw and you’ll able to use the monochrome conversion tools of your editing software, but you can still set the picture style of your camera to black and white to get a mono preview on the camera’s rear display or in its electronic viewfinder, if it has one.
Allow shadows to become solid, ink-black shapes that can add structure