While most architectural photography focuses on buildings, the landscaping is just as important. The landscape the surrounds and moves through your buildings is critical to the comfort and wellbeing of your employees, customers, tenants, and guests. Just like your landscape is integrated into your architecture by great architects and architecture firms, landscape photography should be integrated into your architectural photography.
How Weather and Time Influence Landscape
Landscape photography is very weather and time-of-day dependent, as much or even more so than the architecture it supports. As I’ve mentioned in blogs such as Architectural Photographers Have to Be Weathermen or The Best Time of Day to Shoot Architectural Photography, the strength and angles of light can make or break a shoot.
Landscape Photography: Pools
Mid-day provides an ideal time to shoot pools. Pools often are shadowed by building and or trees part of the day. But when the sun is at its highest, it normally has full sun on the water.
Landscape Photography: Patios and Walkways
Later in the afternoon or early morning and before sunset can provide a warm angular light that accents the hardscapes of stone, brick, and concrete walkways, patios, benches, and other outdoor landscaping.
Landscape Photography: Firepits and Landscape Lighting
Especially for homes, hotels, apartments, and resorts, you want to highlight that even when the sun goes down, there’s plenty to do around your property. Think about scheduling a twilight shoot to highlight firepits, landscape lighting, and other evening activities alongside your building’s lighting.
How Landscaping Transforms Your Architecture
The right architectural photographer and landscape can turn nice or even mundane buildings into something fantastic. Just at it’s important for architects to incorporate landscapes into building designs: showing them off in photography will always pay dividends.
Incorporating Bridges, Roads, Trails, and Crossings into Photography
Landscape photography is not all flowers and trees. It’s also how people get there and how traffic flows around it. As individuals become more interested in foot traffic and alternative routes, it’s important to have a photographer highlight that.
Bridges
Roads
Multi-Use Paths and Trails
Road Crossings
Much like the landscape itself, landscape photography sets a mood, highlights the desirable qualities around your buildings, and helps augment your primary architectural photography. If you’re looking for an architectural photographer in the greater Boston area, contact me over at Shupe Studios.