SHOOT DOWN

Always take advantage of the opportunity to take photos looking down.

When traveling, you are given many opportunities to go up into things.  This might be the camponeili of a cathedral.  You might be able to walk along the top of the medieval wall of a city.  The road that you are driving on might fall off on one side.  There might be a castle in the middle of the old city that you can go up in.

Getting above the surrounding buildings always yields excellent opportunities to take photos of them looking down.  These photos are more or less of an isometric projection.  The typical isometric is a downward looking projection.

A photo of a building from above will, in most cases, give you sufficient data from which to make your transparent drawing.  Many times, you only need that one photo from above to understand the majority of how a form resolves.  That one photo becomes a very powerful data resource.

Whereas when you are at the same level as the building, you need to take photos from at least more than one viewpoint.  Ideally, when the building is level with you, photos that have a 180 degree orientation from each other is the best.

I took these photos from a window on an upper floor in a Kasbah in Morocco.  The height afforded the ability to look down into the composition, which is an occupied residence with outbuildings for animals.  With these photos from above, I was able to draw transparently while I recorded features such as the sloping site, interior courtyard, natural light intake to the building, simple stepping of the forms, shade and shadow, etc.

Many times during the fast pace of a typical trip, you really will not know how much information you got on your photos until you look at them later.  I am always amazed about how much detail is captured, and therefore how much there is to draw.

This is the kind of photo that you can use to draw from many times.  I think most of the history of architecture is contained within this building.  This is a world class building.

The concept of taking photos looking down was first presented on the page titled ORDINARY ROOFSCAPE.