Chris Smith from Out of Chicago Photography asked me to partner with him to teach a Fine Art Architectural Photography workshop last Saturday and we had such a great time! It really was a fantastic group of people that attended the workshop and we couldn’t have asked for better weather to spend the day weaving our way through the Loop.
We started off in the classroom discussing subject matter, composition, working in series and furthering your vision. I led the morning session covering what I look for in terms of architectural subjects: lines, curves, shadows, reflections, interesting staircases and that extra something that is typically a human or natural component…trees, clouds, individuals, etc.. We covered composition and how these rules/ideas relate to an architectural subject: symmetry, leading lines, repetitive patterns, isolation, minimalism, filling the frame, viewpoint and light. And then moved onto approaching your subject through creating series. To me, this is key, it’s the only way to move past those obvious shots and push yourself to seeing in a unique way. We then spent a brief amount of time discussing vision and understanding themes and commonalities in the way you shoot from subject to subject. One day I’ll get around to writing a blog post discussing each one of these topics in more detail.
After our morning in the classroom we made our way around the southern and western edges of the loop, grabbed lunch and then spent a couple more hours photographing our way back to the classroom. Chris led the afternoon session discussing some post-processing pointers and both he and I critiqued each individuals shots from earlier in the day.
We all really had an amazing time, so much fun and some great tips on how to see things in a new way when approaching architecture.
I didn’t spend a lot of time photographing since I was there to help the workshop attendees but here are a few shots I made. And in color even! Feel free to check out the Flickr set here, because you know I can’t avoid b&w processing too. Enjoy!