My photography strengths don't lie in architecture. Frankly, it's a struggle for me. It's not the buildings themselves - it's a matter of what story I'm trying to tell. I don't always have one. Anyway, here are some pictures that made the cut:
A few things I learned about my choices:
1) I'm obsessed with College Hall (the green building) and the Fisher Fine Arts Library (the last two pictures). This is amusing, since I don't remember ever having taken more than one class at College Hall, and I didn't spend much time in Fisher, either.
2) Although I practically lived in Houston Hall (the fourth picture) in college, I didn't take too many pictures of it. I'll admit that I don't think it's the nicest building there. I also struggled with the interior shots there. I took some pictures of the Hall of Flags, but none of them turned out well.
3) I took NO pictures of the places where I spent the most time, aside from Houston Hall. Honestly, those buildings weren't pretty at all (DRL, Stiteler). Don't get me wrong, though, some of my best classes were in those less-than-pretty buildings. :)
4) Some abstract options looked nice (like the last picture, and a few others), but most did not. Penn is a historic campus, and my abstracts are better suited to modern contexts.
5) These pictures don't really tell a story, but they would make nice postcards. This is progress for me.
6) I used a wide-angle lens for the most part, except for the abstracts. I'm not sure if a point-and-shoot would have been good enough.
Some things for you to think about:
1) Make sure your buildings don't look like they're leaning. That happens if you tilt the camera upward to try to include the entire subject in the frame. You'll notice that I don't have full shots of some of the buildings. This is because even with my wide-angle lens, I couldn't fit the entire picture. I opted to showcase the open space (Penn is in the city of Philadelphia, but you'd never know it) and the grass instead. With a point-and-shoot, you'll have to make some sacrifices, since your shots won't be as wide. This means you'll need to stand further back, and crop liberally.
2) The cloudy day was great in terms of being able to avoid harsh reflections, but I had to add saturation and luminance to every picture I took. Some of this can be done if you have a point-and-shoot (and don't shoot in RAW), but you may want to be mindful of this by trying to use a setting such as "Vivid" - or something along those lines. You'll save time when you post-process.
3) I had to turn up the ISO for almost every picture. Low light isn't always your friend. This especially applies to the last picture in this set, which was taken indoors.
4) Keep an eye on your white balance, especially if not shooting in RAW. I forgot to change one of my settings, and a few of my pictures were blue. It's no big deal for RAW images, but it's hard to correct JPEGs. For the outdoor pictures, I used Cloudy. For interior pictures, I used Tungsten (so that they wouldn't look yellow).
5) Go with what you like. I focused on a few buildings, and ignored most others. It's fine.
6) Experiment and have fun. Many of my pictures didn't turn out well. I'm glad I tried different things, though.
Till tomorrow!
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