Not too long ago there was an excellent article on taking photos of buildings and using them as background buildings. The results were very realistic.
Does anyone remember the month/year of the article. It was within the last 2 years. I cannot find the article in my archives.
I believe the article you want is “Make realistic-looking buildings from photos and plastic” by Paul Dolkos in the May 2012 issue starting on page 30. I was able to find this thanks to ipad.
I don’t recall the article, but it’s not too difficult. Try to shoot on a day with bright overcast. This will reduce shadows on your building. If you have multiple buildings on your backdrop with shadows being cast in opposite directions it would look pretty wierd.
You don’t want to get too close to the building because having to use a wide angle lens will introduce barrel distortion. Step back a bit shoot in the short telephoto range. You may need to use the Perspective Tool in Gimp to correct for perspective. Gimp also has a lens distortion tool in the Filter:Distorts menu.
For a long building you’ll probably need to stitch together several photos.
Steve S
Here’s an example of what can be done with the perspective tool in GIMP. Once you’ve selected the Perspective tool, small squares will appear in each corner. Tug on the squares until everything is vertical and horizontal. Making the grid visible can be helpful with this. Once you’ve got everything the way you want it, click the Transform button in the dialog box to make the changes permanent.
You shouldn’t be photographing a building from such an oblique angle, but I just wanted to show what was possible. For example, if you look closely at the pilasters you can see one side of them because we were shooting at them from an angle. You want to shoot head-on as much as possible.
Steve S
Bingo! Thanks so much for finding this article for me.
Much appreciated.
Bob Morningstar