From the course: Architectural Photography: Exteriors

Touring the exterior of the small Japanese-style home

From the course: Architectural Photography: Exteriors

Touring the exterior of the small Japanese-style home

We're here at this beautiful Japanese style house. The house is built in the traditional way where the support structural members are morticed together as opposed to building stud walls. It is floating above grade on posts and it is surrounded by this fabulous garden. The lot began life as a swamp. And Eleanor came in, put in French drains, designed the whole thing. It all empties into this stunning koi pond at the end of the property. So the detailing in the house and the garden just blows me away. It's a 25 year labor of love to develop this house to the point of where it is right now. And the. Planting and the whole plan of. It's just amazing. So really the garden and the house together are so well thought out. There's not just one shot that tells the entire story, so it's going to take a series of details and an overall to really put the picture together. With that in mind, we'll be shooting details of the garden. We'll be shooting details that show how the house relates to the garden. How the board walk wraps around. How the house floats above grade. So shooting exteriors means utilizing the sun. It's really what's going to light the majority of what we're going to be doing, and being sensitive to how the sun is lighting the architecture in the garden is critical. So I personally love it when foliage is back-lit because the green just glows and the flowers look really beautiful that way. So when I'm looking to photograph the garden, I'm always looking for angles that work. To include a backlighting. Also I look for a single element to use in the composition. Something that really excites or draws my eye so as is always the case with exterior architectural photography you can't control the weather and whatever happens, happens. When I was doing my walkthrough earlier today we had bits of beautiful sunlight then the clouds would close up and then the sun would peek back out again and we just you never know. You just never know. So with that in mind, you have to have a plan that'll get you through whatever the weather is. So tonight, later, we're going to go out and we're going to shoot an exterior with a glowing window. And no matter what the Sun does, whether it's cloudy or we have a beautiful golden hour, whatever it is, we'll get a great shot there. So let's go and get some details.

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