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Miguel Santos Novoa's picture

Looking for CC for Commercial Architecture Portfolio.

Hey guys, looking for CC. This was not a commissioned project, having said that I am looking for harsh but constructive criticism on the photographs.

What could I do better. I am aiming for creating a commercial architecture portfolio and would like to integrate some of these photographs. I think some of them could be, and would like to hear from you on what could I do better.

So, went to photograph this building is the Statoil (now Equinor) Regional Building office in Oslo, Norway. Coordinates: 59.895999, 10.630110

Statoil (now Equinor) is the state-owned oil company in Norway, and the project reflects the modular setting of how oil platforms are assembled and used.

I went to shoot the exterior (since it is not commissioned) on a holiday and ended up with these shots. They are single exposure, now I regret that in the dark side I didn't use tripod and exposure bracketing, but well.

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2 Comments

I really dig the shots. I've written a lot here - hopefully it's helpful. I'll present this as how I'd expect a client to view these images.

If the client was the architect, they're going to appreciate the large-picture shots of the property, but they're also going to want detail shots of the various unique portions of the building. Shots of the windows at the end. The painting on the building's underside. The detail of how the upper section intersects with the lower section. They won't just use these photos for marketing, but also to show a potential client how they put together the building and how those details can be used for their project.

If I was the land planner/master planner/developer, I'd want more shots farther back showing the parking and how it integrates with the building. Shots that show the "flow" of the property - ingress, egress, how it connects with the actual road, etc.

The Landscape Architect is going to want overall shots along with details of the various items planted and installed around the property. Those little poles around the outside of the sidewalk. The way the hills are landscaped to flow with the building.

From a commercial photographer perspective and talking about the composition, processing, and overall presentation of this "portfolio" for the building, I'd suggest the following:

- Watch the haloing around the buildings. When masking in the sky try to get that tolerance down so that you don't have glowing edges as seen in Photo 1.

- Less is more. The best architectural photographers figure out how to present the project in a flattering way while not looking busy. Granted, the facade of this building is very busy, but you were able to get that under control in Photo 4.

- Details matter. Get in close. Grab shots that show how the building was put together. Remember that every single portion of this building was designed and built on purpose to achieve a specific goal. You have literally thousands of people involved at all levels to bring a project like this to life. The people who installed the windows want to see awesome photos of this project. The people who did the exterior paneling, the people who manufactured various custom trim pieces, the guys who put in the commercial doors and locking systems, the people who installed those super thin supports to help keep the cantilevered portions of the building under control, all of these people would want these shots for their portfolios. When you shoot a property, take shots that you can use to market to various contractors as well - imagine not getting paid once to shoot this property, but getting paid five times by five different businesses.

Couple of closing comments:
- These shots aren't bad by any means. They just show a very similar story from photo to photo. Get a variety of shots. A building like this will need a telephoto lens (something like a 70-200) to really get in close. I'd even use a 300mm or more from farther away in an elevated position to get an overall shot with a more "flattened" perspective.

- Kill boring foregrounds. Photo 5 can be cropped in a 16:9 ratio to get rid of more of the lawn.

- Shot 1 needs some brightness on that foreground. If you bring up a gradient filter from the bottom and pull the exposure up as well as fix the haloing, this might be your portfolio cover.

- A great photo pulls your perspective through it from front to back. Photo 4 does a fantastic job of this with the way the path winds around the left side of the shot. I would personally lighten the shadows a bit on that shot and decrease the luminosity/saturation of the green channel a tad to eliminate some of the hard contrast, but overall it's a great shot. Shot 6 is a great example of this as well.

- Shot 7 is really cool. I'd crop out some of the bottom to balance out the composition a bit and keep the heights of the various elements in the shot roughly similar. Great shot.

- The majority of your vertical and horizontal lines are great. That being said, shots like number 3 would be a throwaway for me - there is too much going on to focus on one single thing.

- The cropping is generally great. Also, fantastic job on the portrait orientations. Too many photographers neglect these. Photo 9 is strong but the wide angle effect is very, very pronounced and will turn off some viewers who understand what they're looking at. If there's any one common pet peeve I've noticed with clients, it would be the wide angle effect. It's hard to get around a lot of times, but moving back and using a 50, 85, or 70-200 lens to flatten out the subject helps with this.

- I love the last shot, I just wish it was taken later in the day. It looks like you have some water back there - as the sun gets lower, contrast diminishes and saturation begins to return to the landscape. Some Golden Hour / Blue Hour light would be phenomenal on this building's landscape. The building itself might get too dark at that time, but you should have a few shots from when it's brighter to mask in and shift the color over to something more warm to really give an amazing view of the property.

Great shots, keep it up, looking forward to seeing more!

Thank you very much, I really appreciate very much your feedback. :)