What is the first feeling that hits you when you scroll through your social media feeds when a picture of a beautifully landscaped location or an amazing house shows up ?
Don't you feel curious to know the location of that view or in case if you are re-decorating your home, don't you straight hit the save button to your right so that you could use that as an idea?
Well, this is the power that photography holds in our lives.
The relationship between architecture and photography is as strong as the relationship between music and the strings of a guitar. Just as an artist communicates music to its audience through the means of a guitar, an architect communicates his ideas to the general public by the means of photography.
This symbiotic relationship between a photographer and an architect remains age old. From the times when architecture all over the world was facing a massive revolution, famous architects have always had their works photographed and amassed to build in their reputation in the market and also increase the clients.
Architectural photography hold the power of first,catching the attention of the viewer, second communicating the idea and concept of existence of the architecture and third influencing its user's psychology and approach. This power of architectural photography is being exploited by almost all architects and upcoming interior designers to build in a stronger, more comprehensive and a very vocal portfolio as a means to expand their business and profits.
Eyes believe what they see. Would you hire an architect without having a background check on his past projects ? of course, not! you would first like to look at some impressive photographs of the projects, have questions about the functionality of the projects and even visit the site for these projects just to ensure that your architect is trustworthy and capable of designing and running a space successfully. Hence, impressive photography of the project is the first step towards impressing the clients.
Keeping aside the materialistic aspect, architectural photography helps evolving architecture in its own different way. As students or as designers, the first thing that we do after receiving a brief for a project is brainstorm. We look for case studies, projects that are inspired by people. We look for how the spaces work together and how people interact with them.
We study works of different architects and we compare. We become more aware of both contemporary and modern architectural techniques that are existing in today's architectural practices. Through this process of visual communication and understanding, we are able to further evolve, complicate or simplify these techniques and further increase their efficiency and the comfort that they provide the general public.
Further, due to the greater access of the world wide web to the general public, architectural photography has somehow increased the pressure on the designers and planners to produce. Imagine having your house designed, wouldn't you be googling some great ideas for the elevation of your house or for your master bedroom, a particular design of a pergola that you would like to have installed or maybe have a bay window to maximize the views from your bedroom ?. You might even create a pint-erst board and share it with your decorator or architect and have them design it for you.
The designers can always relate to being on their toes meeting your design requirements within your budgets and give you the same aesthetic and design that you wanted. This has eventually increased the need for fresh ideas and hence, fresh, young and fertile brains that could generate them and modify them according to the client's needs.
Architectural photography has in a way turned out to become pornography, no matter how overstated this fact is, it has given people a substitute to pleasure. Photographs capture the intimacy of people with a building which is very important since buildings can not to be just idealized as monumental structures. Photography linked with architecture helps to convey the dynamics of the built forms with their users. It delivers the true knowledge of building science as well as the art quotient behind erections of architectural marvels.
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