How to Shoot Illuminated Buildings

The MasterClass Series #12

How to Shoot Illuminated Buildings

Equipment

EOS 5D Mark III
TS-E 24mm f/3.5 L (Ministry of Culture and Science)
EF 24-70mm f/4 L IS USM (NYC Skyline)
EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM (President’s House and Baha’i Temple)

EXIF #1

The Ministry of Science and Culture (Warsaw) Shot
Focal length: 24mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 5 seconds
ISO: 100

EXIF #2

NYC Skyline Shot
Focal length: 26mm
Aperture: f/4
Shutter speed: 1/20
ISO: 2000

EXIF #3

President’s House Shot
Focal length: 32mm
Aperture: f/7.1
Shutter speed: 5 seconds
ISO: 100

EXIF #4

Baha’i Temple Shot
Focal length: 25mm
Aperture: f/5
Shutter speed: 1/13
ISO: 3200

Editing

Adobe Lightroom Classic CC

We talked about shooting against the light last week. Let’s look at another challenging scenario – how to shoot illuminated buildings.

The story

During travels, now and then, we find cities celebrating. The cliched gesture is illuminating city icons. Capturing those celebratory moments is a great story for travel photographers and writers. Not just that, we know many city skylines for their aesthetic illumination, Shanghai and New York City, for instance. These too, offer stunning photo ops.

Shooting illuminated buildings challenge

We are talking about low-light night shots here. There is no fixed pattern or rules for illumination. At one place, we may find cool-blue LEDs, while at another, traditional tungstens. The colour temperatures of these lights differ. And, talking of skylines, they have mixed lighting. The challenge is shooting these elusive colour temperatures as we see them. Unless we get it right, we lose the ambience created. An additional challenge is of ensuring sharp and crisp (non-blurry) images. 

The shots

Shooting illuminated buildings is all about meticulous shot planning and judicious editing. Let me outline the steps. First, you must find a vantage that offers an uncluttered view of the subject. You may need to recce the area beforehand.

Shots #1 & #2

For shot #1, I knew I needed the roundabout to provide a circular base for the cake with the tall, pointy, delectable pastry of a building, illuminated in soft pastels. For a convincing effect, I chose blue-hour for the shoot. The light trails of vehicles going around the roundabout accord the desired circular base. 

I recced the entire stretch from Hotel Novotel to the front of the Ministry of Science and Culture building in Warsaw during the afternoon. The blue-hour window available to make a nice shot was less than 15 minutes. After the recce, the window of my fourth-floor Novotel room and the widest lens I had, became the partners for this shot. To capture light trails, I mounted the camera on a tripod for a steady shot. And used a remote to eliminate any camera shake caused by pressing the trigger.

Shot #2 is another blue-hour frame captured from the top of the Empire State building. Iconic New York City (NYC) skyline is best viewed from an elevated vantage. Here, with no compulsion of slow shutter speed, a hand-held shot with a pumped-up ISO worked. 

Shots #3 & #4

For shot #3, I climbed atop the massive fountain near the President’s House and worked my way through around it to catch its reflection (Don’t ask how that was managed!). With the camera on a tripod, I captured a few frames to select the frame that had a crisp reflection. That is only possible when there is no breeze-induced movement in the water.

Shot #4 needed a 17mm wide lens on a tripod-mounted full-frame camera to fit the massive Lotus Temple in the frame. To get the glow of the temple and to avoid burning out the moon, precise exposure was necessary.

Summing Up

In all the shots, at the editing stage, my top priority was to adjust the white balance (Pro Tip: shoot raw, and not jpg, to adjust the white balance during edit). Adobe Lightroom Classic CC has certain pre-set white balance settings – tungsten, fluorescent, daylight, cloudy, shadow. I shoot on the daylight setting. But in the edit, changed it as needed to either tungsten, fluorescent, or even custom.

So, let’s keep the following caveats in mind when shooting illuminated buildings:

1. Do a recce before shooting;
2. Shoot in raw format;
3. Use an ultra-wide lens;
4. Decide if a slow shutter speed is necessary;
5. Either way, steady the camera by using a tripod; and
6. Use a remote or self-timer setting to avoid a camera shake when you press the trigger.

You can take a look at another illuminated building shot HERE.

Try these tips the next time you need to shoot an illuminated building or a lit-up cityscape. And see the frame sparkle!

Busy now? Pin it for later.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Comments

comments