Journal · Preparation
How do you prepare a building for a photoshoot?
An hour of preparation reliably buys more good frames than an extra hour of shooting. Most of it is unglamorous: clearing, cleaning, and deciding who can move things.
Preparation
Clear the frame
The single biggest time cost on a shoot day is moving things that could have been moved beforehand. Skips, site vehicles, cones, loose materials, wheelie bins, and A-boards all have a way of parking themselves in front of the best angle.
Where it is safe and practical, clear the immediate area of the building before the photographer arrives. Anything left in shot either costs shoot time to move or retouching time to remove, and retouching beyond the light included is billable.
Preparation
Clean the things that photograph badly
Glass shows everything. So do polished floors, brushed metal, and glossy worktops. A quick clean of the glazing at eye level and the entrance area is worth a surprising amount, because smears and fingerprints are laborious to remove afterwards.
Indoors, check the small stuff: cables trailing across desks, fire extinguishers in sightlines, mismatched chairs, blinds at different heights. Blinds in particular. A row of windows with the blinds set at five different heights ruins an otherwise good frame and takes two minutes to fix in advance.
Preparation
Nominate one person, and sort access early
Have one point of contact on site who can open a door, move a vehicle, switch lights on and off, and make a decision without convening a meeting. This is the highest-value preparation on the list.
And arrange access before the day: passes, inductions, permits, security and reception expecting a photographer. Turning up to a locked riser or an unbooked induction is the most avoidable way to lose an hour.
Preparation
Say what you want highlighted
A photographer will find the obvious shots without being told. What they cannot know is which junction the designer agonised over, which material was the hardest to get signed off, or which view the client always asks about.
Name those in advance. It is the difference between a competent set and one that makes the people who built the thing feel it was understood.
Common questions
Frequently asked
How do I prepare a building for an architectural photoshoot?
Clear skips, vehicles, bins, and loose materials from around the building where safe, clean the glazing and entrance, tidy cables and align blinds indoors, arrange access and passes in advance, and nominate one person on site who can move things and make decisions.
What ruins architectural photographs most often?
Clutter in the frame, dirty glass, and blinds set at different heights across a row of windows. All three are quick to fix beforehand and slow to fix afterwards.
Who should be on site during a photoshoot?
One nominated point of contact who can open doors, move a vehicle, control lighting, and make decisions without needing to consult a group. It saves more shoot time than anything else on the list.
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