Glance at the summary firstThe summary from the end of the lesson, as a road map before you start reading.
Part of a building can turn into a photo that doesn't show the whole but tells something on its own: an edge-to-edge pattern carries the repetition outside the frame, a junction detail shows how the building was made, a sky slice turns the space left between buildings into a shape. A face inside the pattern brings back the scale and gathers the gaze; that face is exposed by taking the metering from it.
Learning goal
You will be able to stop showing a building as a whole and make one of its parts, one of its patterns, one of its lines or one of its textures the subject of a separate photo. By letting repeating windows or panels run off all four edges of the frame, you will build the impression that the pattern continues outside the frame. Where two materials meet, you will find a detail that tells how the building was made. Looking up between buildings, you will read the shape the roof edges cut out of the sky as a form. You will see how, in an abstract frame, a person draws the gaze and brings back the frame's scale; you will expose that person's face so that it isn't lost in the pattern's hard light.
The question
Your friend shows the brick apartment frame shot in late afternoon light on the screen at the club. A member enlarges the frame and leaves only one corner: the sharp shadow under the window frame, below it rows of bricks laid offset from each other, in the corner the old wood of the bay window. An apartment building no longer shows; a line, a bond and a network of cracks show. Half of the people in the room watch this crop longer than the whole frame. Can part of a building be stronger than the whole?
Context
While working on symmetry and pattern you told apart the pattern formed by a shape repeated enough to fill the frame, the rhythm set up by spaced repetition, and the single different element inside this repetition that draws the gaze to itself (Lesson 14.3). In the abstract photography lesson you tried the way of tearing an object from its surroundings by coming close or cropping, and building a photo whose subject is shape, line and tone (Lesson 16.10). While following the facade hour by hour you also noticed that the shadows falling in window recesses and under eaves show a facade's depth (Lesson A.3).
In architecture all these tools come together, because a building is already made of repeating parts: the same window, the same brick, the same panel, the same railing. A detail frame chooses one of these parts and turns it into an image independent of the building. These frames neither take the place of telling the building as a whole nor are worth less than it; the two are two separate readings of the same structure.
Simple explanation
How does a pattern run off the frame?
An edge-to-edge pattern is framing a repeating element so that it continues outside all four edges of the frame. If the grid of windows, balconies or panels ends somewhere inside the frame, the viewer sees the building's boundary and reads the frame as a building. When the grid is cut at every edge, this boundary is lost; the pattern looks as if it goes on outside the frame forever, and the frame becomes a surface more than a building.
For this you need to stand across from the pattern, holding the camera parallel to the facade; if the parallelism breaks, the grid's lines head for a vanishing point and the pattern slides into depth. Shooting from afar with a long lens makes this parallelism easier to set up, because a high part of the facade can be reached without tilting the camera up. An edge-to-edge pattern often also creates an ambiguity of scale: if there is no element of known size such as a door or a person in the frame, the viewer can't tell whether the grid they see is a matchbox or a ten-story facade. This ambiguity can strengthen the abstraction; a face appearing in a single window, on the other hand, becomes both the element that breaks the pattern and gives the scale back at once.
How does a detail tell the building?
A junction detail is the place where two materials or two structural parts meet and that shows how the building was made: a frame where stone touches glass, the point where a wooden beam sits on an iron joint, the corner where concrete's formwork marks meet a brick wall. These places tell both a building's material and its craft; they make visible in a single frame a workmanship lost in the facade as a whole.
To read such a detail, light is often decisive. Light striking from the side raises a stone's chisel marks and a wood's grain; the even light of open shade shows the color of the two materials and the difference between them more calmly. Sharpness matters in a detail frame too: the junction must be in full focus, because the frame's whole meaning is loaded there. In very close shots, stopping the aperture down a little or holding the camera parallel to the surface spreads the sharpness to both sides of the junction.
What shows when you look up?
A sky slice is the shape the roof edges and facades cut out of the sky when you look up between two or more buildings. In a narrow courtyard, an inner garden or between two tall buildings, a camera looking straight up records the buildings as dark walls running off toward the frame's edges, and the sky as a bright shape in the middle. This shape can be a star, a strip or a broken triangle; the frame's subject is no longer the buildings but the space left between them.
In this view converging verticals aren't a mistake but the frame itself; when the camera turns straight up, the lines run in an orderly way toward a point in the middle. Making the exposure for the sky darkens the facades and hardens the shape; making it for the facades turns the sky into a white void. Which one to choose depends on whether the slice or the texture of the walls will be told.
Visual evidence
The next day your friend goes to a concrete office block from the seventies near the brick apartment building. The block's facade is a grid of square windows of the same size. From the opposite sidewalk, holding the camera parallel to the facade with their long lens, they choose a part from the middle of the grid; the windows run off all four edges and the frame stands like a chessboard.
In one of the windows on the ground floor a clerk with braided hair and dark brown skin is working. The concrete is bright in the sun, the room inside in shade; in the first frame, because the camera metered for the concrete, the woman's face has turned into a dark smudge behind the glass. Your friend comes up to the glass and explains the photo; the woman laughingly agrees and moves to the end of the desk where the sun falls inside. They put the metering on her face and check with the warning on the screen that the bright parts of the concrete carry detail: the fine lines of her face and the warm brown of her skin read, the grid still detailed.
Then they go into the block's courtyard. Looking straight up between the four facades, the sky appears in the middle as a square, the facades turn into dark walls running off in four directions. On the way out, at the entrance door, they photograph in side light the corner where the iron door frame sits on polished stone.
Common mistakes
Common mistakeFraming the pattern so that it ends inside the frame.
The viewer sees the building's boundary and the frame isn't read as a pattern. The fix: come closer, or with a longer lens let the grid run off all four edges.
Common mistakeShooting the pattern by tilting the camera, not parallel to the facade.
The lines head for a point and the pattern breaks up. The fix: go across from the facade, hold the camera level, shoot from afar with a long lens if needed.
Common mistakeExposing a face inside a hard-lit pattern for the pattern's brightness.
The face turns into a dark smudge. The fix: put the metering on the face and check the pattern's bright parts with the warning on the screen.
Summary
Part of a building can turn into a photo that doesn't show the whole but tells something on its own: an edge-to-edge pattern carries the repetition outside the frame, a junction detail shows how the building was made, a sky slice turns the space left between buildings into a shape. A face inside the pattern brings back the scale and gathers the gaze; that face is exposed by taking the metering from it.
Mini assignment
In this assignment you will draw three abstract detail frames out of a single building.
- Find a facade with repeating windows, balconies or panels; holding the camera parallel to the facade, shoot a frame that lets the pattern run off all four edges.
- Find a place in the same building where two materials meet and shoot it in light coming from the side, with the junction in full focus.
- Look straight up in a courtyard or between two buildings and shoot the sky's shape exposed once for the sky, once for the facades; if there is someone inside the pattern, get their permission and take the metering from their face.
Check yourself
- In the pattern frame, does the building's boundary show, or does the pattern run off the frame?
- Does the junction detail tell how the building was made?
- Which exposure of the sky slice shows the shape more strongly, and why?
Glossary
| Term | Short definition |
|---|---|
| Edge-to-edge pattern | Framing a repeating element so that it continues outside all four edges of the frame. |
| Junction detail | The place where two materials or two structural parts meet and that shows how the building was made. |
| Sky slice | The shape the roof edges and facades cut out of the sky when looking up between buildings. |
Mini quiz
1. What does the grid running off all four edges give a pattern frame?
- A) It makes the building's boundary distinct
- B) It gives the impression that the pattern continues outside the frame
- C) It saturates the colors
- D) It widens the area of sharpness
2. Why is the camera held parallel to the facade when shooting a pattern frame?
- A) To increase the light
- B) To shorten the exposure
- C) So the grid's lines don't head for a vanishing point and break up the pattern
- D) To reduce noise
3. What does a junction detail show?
- A) How the building was made and how two materials meet
- B) The building's height
- C) At what hour the facade catches the sun
- D) The building's place on the street
4. How is a face standing in a window inside a concrete grid bright in the sun exposed?
- A) The camera's metering is left on the concrete
- B) The window is left out of the frame
- C) The frame is turned black and white
- D) The metering is taken from the face and the concrete's bright parts are checked with the warning
Answers
- B — When the boundary doesn't show, the grid stops being a building and reads like a surface that goes on and on.
- C — When the parallelism breaks, the lines run off into depth and the orderly repetition scatters.
- A — The place where stone sits on glass or wood on iron tells material and workmanship together.
- D — Metering from the face protects the skin, while the warning shows that the concrete hasn't lost its detail.
Summary card
- A part can be a frame independent of the whole.
- Edge-to-edge pattern: let the grid run off four edges, stand parallel to the facade.
- Junction detail: material and workmanship; side light, full focus.
- Sky slice: the space between buildings is a shape.
- A face in the pattern brings back the scale; take the metering from the face.
Bridge to the next lesson
The clerk at the office block, seeing the photos, offers your friend a job: she will put a small studio apartment she wants to rent out in an ad, and in the frames she shot with her phone the room looks as narrow as a closet. When your friend goes in, they find a room with a window but really small. How does a small room look spacious? The next lesson takes up the ways of showing an interior not as bigger than it is but as it is, yet spacious, without exaggerating the wide angle and by putting the camera at the right height.