Welcome to the Urban Architecture in B/W Workshop given by the great Miguel Valdivieso.

Since we were in Madrid on a business trip, we seized the opportunity to attend one of the most interesting workshops we’ve ever been to: Urban Architecture in B/W.

When it comes to us, in SPIEGELPHOTO, we had previously experienced with urban photography, but what we had never thought about was to give it another twist. Like any other photography discipline, we will surely look after composition, technique, in order to get the best “starting point” for our target photography, but the workflow we will use to obtain our final product will be something completely different, an angle we had never explored before.

And here we are, all set with our cameras, wide angle lenses, polariser and ND filters, and not to forget the tripod. We could do handheld shots but in order to make the best out of this discipline, we were recommended to set the camera on a tripod and include an ND1000 filter as part of the equation. We will be reducing 10 stops of light and therefore we will need a long exposure time for our picture. That will bring us more detail on the subjects as well as a dramatic effect on the sky if we’re shooting on a cloudy day.

Our goal here will be to start off with an image as flat as possible and from there on create our own “lighting” scheme by playing with the highlights and shadows across all volumes and panels that we can identify in our initial image, creating a sensation of volume that will make that image pop. Check the “before and after”!

Why don’t you try out for yourself and let us know the results?