Oh, hello! Just one minute, and let’s talk about architecture photography in Little Planet style!
Okay, as you might know, besides shooting 360videos, I’m a big fan of little planet photography.
I have several techniques and tips in this topic, which you can find on this playlist.
With some of these techniques we can shoot really awesome photos, even street photos.
But when it comes to architecture photography, this style can be a little bit difficult,
and sometimes it worth considering to take a traditional photo of a building instead of little planet.
But sometimes we can have really nice results.
The main problem is that in most of the times it’s a little bit difficult to make our main building pop up
among the other buildings, trees or further objects in the 360 space.
So we have to find the best spot to take a photo.
In most of the cases the best spot for me, when I have a nice clear view to the building
and there are no disturbing details in the other directions.
To take a shot like this I usually walk around the building to find the best spot.
In this case I put the camera right on the top of the stone wall,
so it’s just running through in the middle of the tiny planet, making the environment pure and simple
And here comes a trick which one I really like in little planet photography.
As you will see, I have the freedom to play around with the objects only with a few steps.
Here you can see a street streetlamp in front of the building
I just step backwords a couple of steps, I raise my camera a little bit higher, and it’s almost invisible.
You can check out the shadow on the ground, as a guideline to see where I’m standing.
Of course, I can move in the other direction, stepping closer to the lamp.
So here I have the shot with the lamp.
and now I’m standing right next to it.
Or going even closer I can put the street lamp on the other side of the image.
Besides, we have to take care of the distance, too.
Going too close to the building, it will be too distorted in the photo
but going further, we can find the perfect position to make it look more natural.
Another important thing is symmetry.
Choosing the wrong angle, our building will be twisted.
As you can see, looking at the shadow line, it's only the matter of a few steps, and it looks way better.
But after all, you might observe, that it doesn’t matter what I do,
finally the ground grabs too much attention.
Even when I retouch the camera stand or further objects and people,
there are too much of the ground in the middle of the image.
And it’s a common problem when you want to take a nice little planet photo of a building.
So here comes another trick, I really like in architecture photography:
the technique, I called #holeyplanet.
You can check out my ultimate Holey Planet tutorial in the right top corner,
but now I will make it really fast easy, editing a photo on my smartphone.
The point is that I will hide that boring and ugly ground, focusing on the main building in my photo.
Actually I love this panoramic photo of the palace.
I took it before sunset, and you can see the Sun shining through the windows.
It looks really nice this way, but now I will transform it a little bit.
I create a little planet and an inverted planet with a free application, called Roll World.
There are some pro features, but the basic settings are enough for me now,
and I export these photos in the highest resolution possible.
Then I open another free app, available both on iOs and Android, called Photoshop Mix.
Actually this is the multi-layer editor app of Photoshop for mobile devices.
And now I import both photos I created.
I just open the little planet and the inverted planet photos on top of each other
and I set up the little planet as the upper layer.
Then I tap on the Cut Out button.
Taping on the Smart Selection tool and the Subtract function I erase the middle of the image.
I make sure that only the ground is selected and then I hit okay.
Now, the ground is totally invisible, and I can see the other layer underneath.
It’s very important, that at this point I have to flip the inverted planet photo, before I continue editing.
Then I resize and fit it in the hole.
Selecting the upper layer again, I refine the mask, taping on the Cut Out function one more time.
And this time I use the Basic Brush to do the final touches.
Zooming in I can make sure that everything fits well, and that’s all.
Before uploading on Instagram, I make a final cut, and I’m done.
So, briefly, architecture photography in little planet style is not so easy,
because in most of the cases there are some disturbing details in the image,
distracting the attention from the main building.
But with a little extra work we can shoot nice photos this way, too.
During shooting we have to find the best spot with a clear view to the building,
the perfect angle and the appropriate distance.
Going far enough we can avoid distortion,
but staying close enough we can keep the building in focus,
so it won’t disappear among other buildings or objects.
Then during post processing just be creative.
You can erase some disturbing details, like tripods
and you can play around with my #holeyplanet technique, too.
And if you like these tips, please thumbs up,
and for further 360 contents and tutorials, subscribe to my YouTube channel.
And see you next time!