4k Cityscapes

[Carri Seargent]

Fromthe tallest buildings and wide expanses to the tiniest details of city life, there is so much possibility for what you can create with cityscape photography. The only limit is your creativity (and your walking shoes).

When I am on a tripod with a lot of time to setup a shot, I typically will use Manual Mode to perfect my settings, however, the rest of the time when walking around or tight on time, I will use Aperture Priority.

In cities with tall buildings, the light changes quickly and constantly, and shooting on Manual will have you changing the settings every time this happens or every time you look in a different direction.

Then when you want to fix the exposure, you can just use the exposure compensations (+/-) to dial in the settings. Photos with a mix of dark shadows and bright whites can confuse the camera, so this is when you should pay particular attention to using your compensation.

The rule is to always have your shutter speed be a minimum of one over your focal length. So if your lens is set at 75mm, the shutter speed should be at least 1/75th of a second or faster.

Typically (but not always of course), you will want as much depth of field as you can get in your cityscape photos to get sharpness throughout the frame. However, you need to consider the wind.

Just like any good landscape, composition is one of the most important elements to consider in your cityscapes. When you can mix an interesting location with a fantastic composition and great light, that is when the magic happens.

When using the rule of thirds, this allows you to move the main subject off-center and to create a more effective play between the main subject and the background, allowing the eyes to move fluidly between both.

This will give you the ability to show all of the background while still having your main foreground subject large in the frame. By contrast, using too much of a telephoto view can compress the elements and make your main subject blend into the scene more than you want.

However, I see this messed up all the time. A photographer will find an incredible background and then just wait for any person to walk through to finish the scene. In these cases, the background alone was the better shot.

The more interesting the background, the more interesting the person has to be to complete the photograph. The person has to stand up to the background and add to things, rather than just becoming a random element.

The most repeated statement about photography is that it is painting with light, and ultimately that is very true. Without good light, there is a much tougher chance of your photograph being successful.

For good reason, people harp on the golden hour just before sunset and after sunrise where the warm colors pop, the blue hour just after when everything becomes cool and even, and night photography where cities come alive with light. These are typically known as the best lighting times for photography, and embracing them will transform your cityscapes.

During the most-ideal lighting times such as the blue or golden hour, color can really standout and sometimes it is a shame to remove it. It can make the photos feel more true to the scene, fun, modern, and enhance the inherent complexities of the scene.

If you are looking for a more classic feel to your cityscape images, black and white is often the way to go. Shadows and highlights, lines, designs, and faces will usually stand out more in black and white.

Researching, reading, watching videos, and hiring guides can help you to understand much more about where to go and what you are photographing. Wandering and getting lost is also just as important but having some early knowledge can lay the groundwork for a successful photography day or trip.

There is so much to capture on the street level that you can create grand cityscape-type photographs of all types of things other than huge buildings and vistas. Think about storefronts, quirky details, graffiti, old walls, street corners. The opportunities are endless.

A defining characteristic of cityscape photography is often the idea of perfection. Everything needs to be in the perfect place and the lighting needs to be perfect. All the horizon lines in the photo need to be straight.

Above and left are two more cityscapes. These include quilts celebrating New York City (one is on the left; more are in the book above); Los Angeles (two quilts); Chicago (one quilt); and a whole bunch of fantasy cities, including 'Scrap City 1', above, and 'Scrap City 2,' below. I put most of what I learned into my 96-page ebook published in 2023, "Scrap Cities: Joyful Modern Architecture-Inspired Quilts." Find more images and information in my Etsy shop listing, at -cities-joyful-modern-architecture (for the paperback book), or -cities-joyful-modern-cityscapes (for the digital edition.)

In the visual arts, a cityscape (urban landscape) is an artistic representation, such as a painting, drawing, print or photograph, of the physical aspects of a city or urban area. It is the urban equivalent of a landscape. Townscape is roughly synonymous with cityscape, though it implies the same difference in urban size and density (and even modernity) implicit in the difference between the words city and town. In urban design the terms refer to the configuration of built forms and interstitial space.

From the first century A.D. dates a fresco at the Baths of Trajan in Rome depicting a bird's eye view of an ancient city.[1] In the Middle Ages, cityscapes appeared as a background for portraits and biblical themes. From the 16th up to the 18th century numerous copperplate prints and etchings were made showing cities in bird's eye view. The function of these prints was to provide a map-like overview.

At the end of the 19th century the impressionists focused on the atmosphere and dynamics of everyday life in the city. Suburban and industrial areas, building sites and railway yards also became subjects for cityscapes. During the 20th century attention became focused on abstract and conceptual art, and thus the production of cityscapes declined. American painter Edward Hopper, who stayed loyal to figurative painting, created intriguing images of the American scene. With a revival of figurative art at the end of the 20th century comes a revaluation of the cityscape. Well-known living cityscape painters are Rackstraw Downes, Antonio Lpez Garca, and Richard Estes. American artist Yvonne Jacquette has made a specialty of aerial cityscapes.

On one hand, the value of a tripod should be obvious for nighttime and blue hour cityscape photos. But it can be just as useful in daytime. During the day, a tripod allows you to use a neutral density filter or image averaging to minimize pedestrians in your photo.

I like to use a nondescript bag for cityscape photography. Bright orange, multi-pocketed bags are great in Zion, but they tend to spotlight you in NYC. Think Tank discontinued my current bag, the Perception 15, although their Urban Approach line seems like a reasonable replacement.

As for shutter speed, the same universal rules still apply. When shooting handheld, aim for a shutter speed that follows the reciprocal rule, or faster. (In other words, at 50mm, a shutter speed of 1/50th of a second or faster.) This can reduce the impact of shaky hands.

For the trickiest focusing situations, however, I do like to zoom in on the live view and check focus manually. This is occasionally necessary in low-light conditions, or when photographing bright, backlit points of light that can fool your autofocus system.

To enable bracketing, most cameras have a BRKT button or menu option. You can also just do it manually by setting a positive or negative exposure compensation when taking pictures. For most cityscapes, I find that +1, 0, and -1 EV is sufficient, although you can include +2 and -2 in very contrasty situations.

Composition on these iconic single buildings can be difficult, as every conceivable angle has already been explored, snapped, uploaded, and probably made into a postcard. Depending on how you want to approach the shot, you can go for the classic postcard angle, and look at it as an exercise in technical skill, or mix things up and get creative with it. Perhaps you can make a reflection off a passing taxi or puddle work, or go even more abstract with it, capturing an iconic part of the building instead.

Occasionally, these bus lines will even offer supplemental routes or tours that are even more tailored to photography. In San Francisco, for instance, the line offered a special viewing stop of the city from across the Golden Gate bridge, as well as a special route that went across to Angel Island, among other areas.

I'm Alex Coleman, a commercial and travel photographer in Arizona. As an educator, I enjoy sharing my appreciation for photography with audiences both online and in person. You can see more of my work on my website.

I like your photos here guys! Very well crafted! I agree with your tips, since I am spent 60% of my photography time shooting cityscapes and urban environments. Generally, I prefer prime lenses for the edge to edge sharpness and small size (plus the Aperture, but for my other projects, not so much for cityscapes). There are few zooms that can give comparable image quality to primes and there are expensive and heavy.

This may sound easy but it is actually one of the hardest things about cityscape photography in my opinion. Good locations are hard to come by. Popular places are usually overrun with tourists and other photographers. In some cases, I have even heard that photographers have paid off security guards to stop other photographers from going up to the same rooftop!

However, once you find a proper location, it will tell you what you need to carry with you. So a little location scouting is probably a good idea. If you have to zoom in to get past some trees then your ultrawide angle lens may not be needed.

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