Featured Article

Urban Landscapes

How to bring out a city’s character in day or night

Elements such as light, framing and aperture can all have a profound effect on the end product, and knowing when to employ which techniques can be the difference between a breath-taking image and yet another snap. If you’re looking for advice on how to turn a standard tourist shot into something special without spending thousands on kit or a new camera, follow our expert guide on urban landscapes….

Perfect Framing

One major issue when framing buildings, especially any that are high rise, is the shape. Being tall and thin works fine for portrait photos, but landscape photography prefers fat and wide. Because of this more of the background will be in frame, making it necessary to be far more aware of the surroundings.

This brings more sky and other buildings into the equation, as no matter how well the building is cropped it’s almost impossible to include the shape without bringing in the surroundings. This makes the framing that much more important, as being forced to include a unwanted elements in an image can either be manipulated to look better or left to look awful. Try to frame the main point of interest in one third of the shot if tall and thin, and pick the most interesting side to concentrate on. Use the Horizon line as a tool to level out the shot, and don’t be too concerned if street level is missed as long as the top of the building is still in frame. Keep aware of the sun’s position as well, as such a wide shot with so many dark and light areas needs decent illumination to be correctly exposed.

Common mistakes made when shooting urban landscapes

Cropped top

To give a sense of scale, and when the choice is available, crop the bottom off of a building as apposed to the top. The main point of focus should be in as much of it's entirety as possible, and having a beautiful skyline rather than a busy street is always preferable.

Under-exposed

Not giving the shutter enough time to correctly expose the image results in everything appearing too dark. Use a tripod and a longer shutter speed to insure the building don't become black monoliths against a darkened sky. Another cause can be too much sun in the shot, causing the camera to darken the whole image.

Out of focus

A relatively basic error to make, but easy enough if crowds walk in front of the camera forcing you to take the shot quickly. Instead of trying to take a quick snap when the crowds clear frame the shot, focus manually then shoot when a gap appears or set up earlier in the day.

Camera shake

Putting the camera on a longer shutter speed in order to get a lighter end product has it's own problems, as the camera becomes far more difficult to hold steady. Use a tripod, monopod or even just a nearby flat surface to insure this doesn't happen to your shots.

Control the depth of sharpness in your image

Of the major settings on a digital camera to explain, aperture is often the most difficult to accurately define. Where focus is obvious when right or wrong, and shutter speed can be directly linked to the rapidity of the subject, aperture affects both of those aspects as well as exposure, but is difficult to pin down as to when incorrectly configured.

The most simplistic way of pinning aperture down is to say it directly affects how much of the image is sharp. In landscape photography a very high aperture is selected, say around f22, to get more of the image sharp. This is because, unlike portrait or sports photography, the majority of area needs to be in focus rather than an individual subject. Upping the aperture makes the amount of space in the lens has to travel through smaller, so the objects closer to the lens don't become over exposed and the rear isn't too dark. 

Low aperture

Opening the lens up to as much light as possible makes the point of focus the only sharp object, and even then the amount of that object sharp is minimal. By keeping the back and foreground blurred the eye is naturally drawn towards the subject but in landscape photography bigger is better.

Medium aperture

More of the subject is sharp, with the foreground now in focus. As the sky is impossible to keep sharp it can be worth using a medium aperture, such as F16, to keep the shutter speed to a sensible level and therefore keep the image slightly brighter overall.

High aperture

Setting the camera to the maximum aperture insures the utmost amount of detail is possible, which is perfect when dealing with buildings. Be prepared for a far longer shutter speed to account for the amount of light being shut out, so use a tripod and cable release. 

Return to features archive »