How to create stunning architectural plans by playing with the light?

Photographing or filming buildings, depending on the time of day, involves good preparation. Often it is necessary to locate places, come and go back to a site, test according to the sunshine, and decide what the best time will be for the final catch. But that's the ideal. It is to count with the possibility of being able to make these various journeys, to have the time, not to be too far away.

If you do not have too much choice and you absolutely have to shoot or shoot during your passage, at a late hour of the day, you risk to end up with areas of sun and shade and You will have to solve this problem.

Here are some tricks and some rules used by the greatest you can, in turn, put into practice. For the mere fact of wanting to unclog the shadows by contenting yourself with overexposing risks burning the sunny parts.

1 - An external light supply

When light is insufficient in some areas, why not just artificially bring it. The materials that exist today can alleviate this kind of problem. They are powerful enough and can be directed to particular places. Flashes for photography, video spots, will bring you the lighting as close as natural.

Then you will have to find the right balance between the lighting you bring, the light of the twilight that remains and the first lights coming from the interior of the buildings.

The bracketing method can help you with different shots, with different diaphragm openings, to determine where the best overall balance is.

2 - How to work best at twilight

In the falling light, it is necessary to act quickly because the lights also change very quickly. To obtain warmer lights it is possible to add a CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gel to your color intake. The use of a filter may also be considered. Connecting your camera or camera to a computer will allow you to immediately judge the color rendering in order to play with and modify them. Now you have to play with the openings to find the best, the one that will retrace the scene as you wanted it in the end.

3 - Reworking the sky

Never neglect this part in any image. The sky must be in perfect harmony with the rest of your picture or your image. A software treatment will allow you to better make it, that it is not too flat, too bland. Its brightness and contrast must match the rest of your image. An architecture must be consistent with this sky and it must not distort the architectural lines to give an impression of distortion.

4 - Post-production work

If you need to rework an image under software, such as a photo in Photoshop, for example, you should avoid multiplying layers. The more layers you have, the more delicate and difficult the intervention, and the less chance you have of reaching your goal. Thus, working on color curves will be much easier.