Architectural photography… with a symmetrical twist

Riverboats carry tourists along Singapore River in this long exposure photograph taken from the Fullerton Hotel looking towards Cavenagh Bridge.

One commonly-cited rule in photography is that you should never place your subject of interest in the centre of the frame but off to one side. The argument is that this creates some tension in the image and makes it more interesting.

I’m not a big fan of this rule because I quite like symmetry in images. So this week, in my journey to find out what makes a good photo essay, I decided to revisit some of my archtectural photographs and make them super-symmetrical with the help of Pixelmator.

Although I appreciate that a photo essay is more than a set of images that share a common visual theme, there’s no doubting that a common visual treatment increases the sense of the images being a collection. For example, the pictures in this essay were taken over the last six years in five different countries with four different cameras. The images were all processed in different ways. But the super-symmetrical treatment means they look like they share a common DNA.

Exchange Tower in Canary Wharf.

The Walkie Talkie Building, Fenchurch St, London.

Colonnade on Praca do comercio, Baixa District, Lisbon.

Trident Hotel, Gurgaon, Delhi, India.

Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Singapore.

Singapore, looking towards the financial district.

A panorama of the Perth skyline.

Downtown Brisbane from Kangaroo Point.

This is photo story 9/52. More details about this project.

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