Architectural Photography, Part 5: Natural Light

Lighting is a critical aspect of architectural photography and something you should plan for in advance. Depending on the circumstances of your project, you may be able to pick and choose your time freely (e.g. personal projects, planning future travel), to exercise some choice within a finite time window (e.g. a project with a future deadline, or time of day on site), or have very little discretion at all (e.g. photographing a public building with a busy operational schedule on a deadline).

In every case, you should know what it is you’re trying to achieve photographically, and also have a contingency plan in case conditions don’t work out as hoped, such as in cases of overcast skies or inclement weather.

The Photographer’s Ephemeris is an ideal tool for planning your architectural photography. It will show you light angles for any location, date and time, and with Photo WX, our photographer’s weather service, you can check expected conditions in order to adjust your schedule or make a contingency plan.

A Case Study: Durham Cathedral

We’ll use Durham Cathedral as a case study to look at natural light planning considerations. It’s a large, prominent Grade 1 listed building in the north of England, a cathedral built in the 12th century in the Romanesque and Early English Gothic styles.

The Eastern Elevation

Most Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals are aligned on an approximate east-west axis, with the altar and transept located towards the east end. This is true in examples all across Europe, including Durham Cathedral. The main entrance to many cathedrals is therefore located towards the west end.

Knowing this gives some obvious clues as to the timing of your photography of such a building. The east end will, generally speaking, be a morning shot, and the west end an afternoon or evening shot.

But, beware. The tradition of “ liturgical ” east corresponding with geographic east breaks down as you step outside the catholic and orthodox traditions into protestant era buildings, or into more modern architecture, or indeed into certain locations constrained by their geographic circumstances. Venice is a prime example: many churches, for example the Frari, are not at all aligned east-west, but instead are built to fit the constraints of their site.

It’s therefore critical to understand the alignment of the building before you attempt to photograph it - unless you’re happy with lucky grab shots where you happen to be in the right place at the right time. Architectural photography generally doesn’t work out so well with this approach.

We travelled to Durham from Hexham one morning early in April this year.

The time window was limited: Durham is one of the handful of locations in the UK where you can renew your passport via a face to face appointment using a priority service. The appointment was at 10:50am, so we set off early in order to get some morning light on the eastern elevation of the building beforehand. Here’s the setup:

You can view also this interactively in Photo Ephemeris using this link. A few points to note:

• The east-west alignment of the building is approximate, not strict
• Open Street Map derived maps are the best option to see details of recesses in the façade
• The sun is off-axis to the building (i.e. not aligned directly at the elevation)

Knowing the precise alignment of the building will give you clues as to when in the year and at what times of day a given elevation may be receiving light. Due to the slight south-eastward orientation, the north elevation of the building will receive more morning light than evening light in general. Furthermore, it will receive that morning light for more days in the year, starting earlier in spring and until later in autumn.

Many people often default to using satellite maps to plan these shots, but often they’re not the best choice. Why? Two reasons: often the satellite image is not directly overhead of the building, which can make precise alignments hard to ‘read’. Secondly, satellite maps come with built-in “ lighting ” - the sunlight and shadows appear as they did at the date and time of the image acquisition, whatever that may have been. This can trick you into believing conditions may be different to what you’ll in fact experience on the ground.

It’s always worth checking the different map styles available in Photo Ephemeris. Different sources may give better or worse coverage of particular locations. In this case, Google’s Street Map footprint of the Cathedral omits all detail from the eastern elevation, but the Open Street Map footprint includes several useful points. For example, we can tell that the deepest recesses of the elevation will lie in deep shadow by around 10:35 in the morning on this day:

Let’s remind ourselves of the final shot, taken at 9:25am:

If this had been taken at 10:35am, the highlighted purple areas would have been in deep shadow:

Arguably, the right hand side of the finished image would benefit from a little more shadow to give more definition to the relief, but we certainly don’t want whole areas of the elevation to be in deep shadow that would obscure important details of the lancets (the tall, narrow windows with the pointed arches).

You might notice that the angle of the sunlight is more or less off-axis to the camera view by the same amount as at sunrise, just that the sun is behind and to the left of the camera rather than to the north. Of course, sunrise would not work, as the sun would be too low in the sky to light the full elevation of the building - there are other buildings directly opposite.

So, our time of 9:25am is well-nigh ideal.

In considering the type of lighting that will work for a building, you should try to be familiar with the architectural language that it expresses. I’d highly recommend Rice’s Language of Buildings for a fun (yes, fun!) and accessible introduction to the topic.

Avoid inadvertently obscuring or omitting important details due to your viewpoint, composition, or light planning!

Interior Photography

What about interior shots? Revisiting our case study from April 8th, we can see that by mid-morning, the southern elevation is receiving plentiful light from the south east. However, be sure to ignore the sunlight in the satellite imagery - that’s misleading. It shows the lighting on the date and time of the imagery, not our intended date and time.

On the day in question, early morning low cloud had burned off completely by around 9:40am, leaving aching blue skies. While that’s not ideal for landscape, it can be good for architecture, including for interiors.

Again, knowing a little about the building helps to set expectations. Romanesque and Gothic Cathedrals don’t have windows at ground level. Instead, windows lie higher in the structure. In order for light to reach the lower parts of the building, the sun must be higher in the sky. For any light to illuminate the upper parts or ceiling, the sun must be lower towards the horizon.

Knowing this, we can expect that mid-morning in April, we should see some light on the columns and arches facing the nave on the north side, as well as light on the columns facing the south aisle, and indeed, that’s what we get:

Looking northeast from the nave - light on the north side columns and arches

Sunlight through the stained glass on the attached columns of the south aisle

Shooting Towards the Sun

In architectural photography, it’s rare that you would want the sun to appear within the frame. Indeed, most commonly, you’ll want the sun to be behind the camera plane illuminating your subject.

An exception to this rule is where you have a repeating element in the shot that can be emphasised by increased contrast. Consider this blind arcade located at the east end of the cathedral behind the choir:

Blind arcade front lit (sun behind the camera)

Blind arcade back lit (sun off-axis in front of the camera to the left)

The front lit version appears rather flat., whereas the backlit image is far more eye catching.

These grab shots were taken seconds apart and with the same exposure settings - nothing changed other than the camera position.

If you were wanting to be sure to capture this detail backlit, you’d need to know that in April, it’s a mid-morning shot. The arcade loses the light by early afternoon.

The Weather

Direct sunlight and blue skies are often ideal conditions for architectural photography. They allow the photographer to exploit contrast in the surface textures and details of a building. The absence of noticeable “ weather ” means it’s not something that’s competing with the true subject of the photo. Also, warm sunlight generally cheers up the mood and can be important for real estate photography.

That said, unless you live in sunny Colorado like I do, then often the skies will not necessarily be clear. What to do? Here are a few ideas.

Weather as Drama

You can sometimes use threatening weather to your advantage to highlight the impact of a building. Here’s another stunning English cathedral, Lincoln, in sunlight but with dramatic clouds looming behind it. I’ve rectified the verticals and somewhat tamed the peakiness of the towers due to the wide angle lens. What we lose in exaggerated vertical thrust we regain from the strong contrast of sun and cloud. The cloud doesn’t distract from the main subject, but rather emphasises the scale of the building:

Artificial Lighting

If the weather won’t cooperate, you may be able to rely on artificial lighting instead. On this particularly gloomy December morning, the illumination on Tower Bridge made all the difference:

Black and White

With persistent cloud and no dramatic constrasts of light or artificial lighting to fall back on, a black and white treatment can rescue your shoot. Here, in this photograph of the bridge over the Tyne at Hexham, sunrise was blocked by thick clouds, but a black and white conversion using Nik Silver Efex gave a good result:

Here, I wanted to emphasise the contrast between the bridge arches and not encourage the viewer’s eye to wander unguided through the less interesting sky. Color filters are a great way to achieve this in black and white processing.

It should also be said: black and white is certainly not just a “ fall back ” option for poor weather. Much of the greatest architectural photography is intentionally shot and/or processed as black and white, and to great effect.

North-facing Elevations

In the northern hemisphere, north facing elevations of buildings do not receive direct sunlight in winter. If the elevation faces directly north, then it’s safe to assume that it will begin to receive light some time after the vernal equinox (around March 21) and will lose direct light again in the days leading to the autumnal equinox (around Sep 21).

However, if the alignment is not exact, those dates will change. You can use Photo Ephemeris to establish the expected period during which light can be expected.

Returning to Durham Cathedral, here are some examples - click the links to view the setup:

• The north transept begins to be grazed by light at sunrise around March 7 and retains light until around Oct 7
• At sunrise on the summer solstice, the north elevation receives plenty of light, but areas fall into shadow quickly to the west of the transept
• In contrast, at sunset, the northern elevation loses all direct light as early as September 11 and does not regain any until March 30

Parts of the Northern Elevation lie in shadow on the summer solstice an hour after sunrise

Generally, when photographing buildings, some direct light is desirable. If it’s impossible, then two options:

• Photograph on a cloudy or partly cloudy day, relying on the clouds to diffuse the light and reduce the contrast
• Photograph at twilight when the building may be illuminated by artificial lights

If relying on artificial lighting, evenings are generally a better bet: many buildings don’t turn on lighting in the early morning hours as often few people are there to see it.

Raking Light

If you spend enough time in art galleries or dealers, you’ll eventually come across the sight of a curator or appraiser looking closely at a painting while holding a torch (flashlight) off to one side. This raking light is used to reveal the texture of the surface of a painting. It can reveal how the artist used impasto to build up the paint, details of brush work, or highlight damages or losses.

We can use sunlight in a similar way with buildings. The key thing is to evaluate the texture and depth of the building’s façade in order to know the right angle of light. Here in Boulder, Colorado, we set out to document the changes of raking sunlight on the south elevation of an older brick building that faces on to Pearl St to the north (see the shot plan). Back in the sixties and seventies, this used to be a women’s clothing store called China Jones, which you can just about still make out painted on the left hand side in the photo:

We had begin shooting some 40 minutes earlier at 7am when the light was in theory just about to start hitting the façade directly. However, small details make all the difference in the world - the building to the right extended out a few inches farther, thus blocking the light from reaching the China Jones building. But looking how it evolved over those 40 minutes:

The gutters, the small recessing of the windows and doors, the random sticking out length of down pipe: all are involved in a play of light and shadow across the features and textures of this modest building.

So what? The key lesson is to stick around and keep shooting - no planning software could have indicated exactly how this scene would evolve. The first shots in the sequence are dull and flat, with the right hand window hiding in shadow.

By the end, we have the texture of the brickwork revealed in the shadows cast mid-way across the boarded up windows, the grain of the wooden loading doors picked out in the morning light, and the rough hewn lintels showing their texture - much more interesting!

Planning and Patience

Architectural photography requires both planning and patience.

You need to understand your subject, its site restrictions, and how the light will evolve through shoot in advance.

You need to know what the expected weather conditions will be so you can adjust accordingly.

Once on location, you need to be patient: even in the absence of weather, light can evolve quickly and in ways that can make or break a shot. Avoid being in a rush and give yourself the time and space to linger in order to make the most of the opportunity.

With the northern hemisphere summer and the travel season fast approaching, be sure to start planning now in order to maximise your chances to come back with a winning portfolio.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it with your photographer friends!