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HOW TO CREATIVELY PHOTOGRAPH WINDOWS AND DOORS

Quick Guide
Written by Robin Nichols

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 Windows and doors make a great subject
matter for many reasons.

Doors and windows are of particular

interest to me because they can reflect
the architectural fashions of a past time,
furnish an insight into the heritage
of a region, provide a compositional
framework for a better picture, or just
produce a literal window into other
people’s lives. And let’s face it, it’s always
interesting to peek into someone else’s
house or yard, just to see how they live.

What you’ll learn in this guide:

·· Ideas on shooting doors and

windows
·· Composition ideas
·· Choosing your subjects, and why
·· How to shoot a jigsaw panorama
Photograph by Robin Nichols
·· Post-processing ideas
One of my favorite door shots
in one of my favorite locations,
·· Best times of the day to shoot
Chefchaouen, Morocco. Everything
in the old city is painted in
exquisite tones of powder blue –
and the color changes from dark
to light, then back to dark again,
through the day depending on
where the sun is. The experience
is as immersive as it is sensual.

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 Westerners tend to use windows and
doors as a way of shutting out the
intrusions of life – dust, dirt, noise, and
often prying eyes. But I’ve come to the
conclusion that, in less wealthy countries,
and especially those in hot climates,
residents do the opposite – throwing
open their doors and windows partly
because that provides better ventilation,
but also because, though their homes
might not be big, it’s part of their cultural
make up.

Wander the streets of Havana or

Marrakesh or Florence and you’ll see
masses of people sitting out on their
porches, wandering the street, or chatting
with folk in cafes.
Photograph by Robin Nichols

I don’t generally go for a lot of Recommended Reading:

people shots in poorer countries. I
Improve your photography by
find it a bit voyeuristic so it doesn’t
sit well with me. But in this instance, working better with light. Grab a
when we stopped to actually visit copy of Photzy’s best-selling
this home in Madagascar, I couldn’t premium guide: Understanding Light
prevent myself from taking a snap of
Book Two.
these two kids as they peered down
at me from their bedroom window.
I specifically framed it as a tall
composition to give weight to the
image, and to emphasize the nature
of the mud brick construction.

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 Photograph by Robin Nichols

Another favorite shot, not because it’s my

best – far from it – but it’s noted because the
overgrown yew tree at St Edward’s church
in Stow-on-the-Wold (UK) is thought to
have inspired JRR Tolkien when he wrote
The Fellowship of the Ring. Because I’d read
about this tree somewhere, I specifically
sought it out to take this picture. Tolkien
or not, it’s still a magnificent sight.

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 RECORDING HISTORY

Whenever I travel to Europe I

inevitably find myself shooting
doors and windows simply based
on their history – an entranceway
to a medieval castle, a bursar’s
gateway into an old university
courtyard, or a vintage church
door that has somehow survived
since the Norman invasion of
England. History is often etched
Photograph by Robin Nichols
with a thick patina that, in the
In another pilgrimage I visited
right light, can be recorded
Wells Cathedral in the UK. It’s
a popular tourist spot as it is a almost as if it were applied
truly magnificent religious edifice, like paint; it’s so gorgeously
but as a photographer I wanted sensuous.
to emulate the early pioneer
photographer Frederick H. Evans
who snapped it back in 1903. His
image was entitled a ‘Sea of Steps’
and was taken through a vaulted
archway leading to the Chapter
House. The unevenness of the
steps, combined with the vaulted
ceiling and open doorways, make
this a classic composition which
I tried to copy. (Because of the
volume of tourists, a lot of patience
is required in these places if you
want it to appear deserted.)

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 Inevitably I often switch to black and
white, or at least tinted black and white,
when shooting historical subjects because
that medium really suits the mood. It
doesn’t work every time, but it’s certainly
worth bearing in mind when post-
processing such pictures.

Photograph by Robin Nichols

Church exterior, Prague. I took this because at the time I was working on a
project entitled ‘Yellow’ and the stark, bold primary color used on the outside of
this church was brilliantly eye-catching, even on this dull November day.

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 COMPOSE YOURSELF

Another way to look at this subject matter is that both

doors and windows are great compositional aides.
Shooting through either presents a perfect way to crop
out stuff that you don’t like for the purpose of making the
subject simpler (i.e. less cluttered) and therefore stronger.

Use doorframes and archways to hide uninteresting skies,

buildings, or other visual complexities that might dilute
the strength of the subject. Note also that the distance
you stand from a window frame works a bit like a zoom
lens; the further back you are from the opening, the less
you see of the view. If you have the space to stand back,
use this as an additional and variable framing device to
make tighter compositions.
Photograph by Robin Nichols Another feature I frequently hunt out is contrasting
Fishing village, Southern Oman. I loved this image for its compositional balance symmetry, such as two doors side by side in a perfectly
and simple color. The heavy blue window on the right-hand side balances out
symmetrical Georgian street, or the totally asymmetrical
the two lighter, pastel colored doors to the left-hand side of the image.
doors and windows found in a row of Elizabethan alms
houses that no longer possess a straight edge anywhere
in its makeup.

And because I love the look of high dynamic range

photography (and its ability to add tremendous textural
detail to an image), I’m also drawn to photograph
old shopfronts, crusty doors, or blocked-in windows –
basically anything that has seen better days.

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 USE WINDOW LIGHT
TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

“Lighting is everything,” so use this

knowledge to position your subject in a
window or doorframe so that the light
pouring into the room falls onto their
face. Natural light portraits using nothing
but window light can be spectacular in
their simplicity and their impact.

When in the field I also find it’s sometimes

best just to lurk.

If I find a door with potential I’ll perhaps

wait until a person or a vehicle passes
through the opening before I press the
shutter. Often, I’ll set the shutter speed to
record that intrusive motion as a blur to
Photograph by Robin Nichols
give the impression of anonymity – more
Man in a church, Lake Tana,
Ethiopia. I asked this man if I could a ‘presence’ than a sharp figure.
take a portrait. He agreed and I
asked him to stand in the doorway Recommended Reading:
of the church. He did but he turned Improve your photography by
to look at me, throwing his face working better with light. Grab a
mostly into deep shade. I asked him
to look outside instead and pressed
copy of Photzy’s best-selling
the shutter. Providing the situation premium guide: Understanding Light
is right, window light can be used as Book Two.
effectively as big lights in a studio.

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 Photograph by Robin Nichols

Damascus old city, Syria. Walking away from the souks into the darkness of a covered alleyway at
night looked really spooky. So I leant against the side of the alley and hung about for a person to walk
past and shot the image with a slow shutter speed to give a ghostly look to the shot.

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 BEST TIME OF
DAY TO SHOOT

Ironically, though most photo

techniques require you to rise
early to get the first light of the
day, or to shoot during the golden
hour around sunset, most of my
favorite doorways have been shot
in the middle of the day. This rule
doesn’t apply to every subject,
but at times you’ll find overhead
sun produces amazing three-
dimensional lighting, emphasizing
the textures in a wooden door, for
example, or just blasting it with
sunshine to bring out the best
color and definition.

Photograph by Robin Nichols

Middle of the day, blisteringly

hot, but the light produced
fantastic hard shadows on this
door frame giving the large rivets
and bolt a strong 3D look.

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 POST-PROCESSING

I also have a habit of post-processing

everything with a dedicated HDR
application. It doesn’t matter if I’m
specifically trying to record more
tones in the frame or not. If the
dynamic range of the scene is too
much for a single shot, which it often
is, I might set up my tripod and
shoot three or five frames at different
exposures for processing using
HDR software. Even with a single
file, I find that this treatment often
produces images with better visual
punch than if I’d simply processed
it using, say, a color and contrast
boost in Photoshop. For me, the
HDR application is faster and often
produces better results.

Photograph by Robin Nichols

Rajastan, India. This was a

tiny little peephole in a country
house somewhere in the Thar
Desert. Someone had painted this
exquisite decoration around the
window to act as a frame and
decoration at the same time.

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 PANORAMA TO THE RESCUE

On occasion I have found that there’s

not enough room to get the shot. This
is particularly relevant if you are a street
photographer. If I can’t step back far
enough to get everything into the frame,
and using an ultra-wide lens adds too much
distortion, the answer might be to shoot
a jigsaw panorama. Basically, shoot the
required scene in sections and then use a
photo editor to stitch the pieces together
into an irregular-edged document.

The trick with the jigsaw panorama

technique is to lower your camera’s
resolution before you shoot (to keep the
composite file size manageable) and
then take multiple snaps of the scene,
overlapping the frames generously –
above, below, to the left and to the right
Photograph by Natalie Hitchens
– until you have everything covered, and
Havana, Cuba. Although this looks like a normal snap of a very big front door, it
was in a street that was probable only 15 feet wide, so almost impossible to shoot, then process the lot in Photoshop.
even with a wide-angle lens. One easy solution is to shoot the subject in bits and to
use a program like Photoshop to stitch it together as if it were a panorama. Even with 15 or more frames, the software
does an amazing job of lining everything
up. You can then either leave the irregular
edges as an additional visual effect or
crop to a rectangle. (Don’t forget to reset
the camera resolution!)

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 THE MORE DOORS
THE MERRIER

I love haunting relics from the past – old

buildings and castles are my favorite
because the architecture is so aged,
uneven and, well, historical.

To include a little mystery, I try to position

myself so I can get a doorway opening
onto another door, and then onto another
door, to capture as much of a visual
pathway through the image as possible.
You usually can’t do this with modern
buildings because they are so rectilinear
and architecturally ‘correct.’

Photograph by Robin Nichols

One of my favorite techniques is go inside a doorway wherever possible and shoot looking
back, with the light spilling into the room. In this example the light was coming in through
both the entrance at left and the tiny light well at the top of the frame. By combining three
exposure-bracketed images using an HDR application, I captured good detail in the shadows
as well as the highlights pouring in from the left to illuminate the steps on the right-hand side.

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 In the days when the Crusaders built the
massive Krak de Chevaliers castle in
what is now war-torn Syria, there were no
building codes as such, so when I visited
a few years ago I was so excited by all
the irregular and revealing passageways,
doors, openings, alleyways, and yes,
more doors.

Recommended Reading:
Improve your photography by
working better with light. Grab a
copy of Photzy’s best-selling
premium guide: Understanding Light
Book Two.

Photograph by Robin Nichols

Another favorite location – sadly now off limits because of the Syrian conflict. Krak
de Chevaliers is a massive Crusader castle built in 1031. I was in the store rooms
underneath part of the castle photographing these wonderful vaulted rooms. Again,
it’s a scene of archways leading to more archways (it’s a slight obsession).

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 THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL

And don’t forget to record the detail.

One afternoon I was wandering through
the old and very dilapidated section of
Nizwa, a country town in Oman. Most of
the houses were in dire need of repair –
which was probably why I was attracted to
photograph them in the first place.

The streets and the crumbling mudbrick

work were bleached almost colorless
in the hot sun, but the doors retained
some of their paintwork so the point of
my focus became the smaller details in
the doors themselves; not macro, just
close-ups – paint surfaces and the locks
that festooned each old house. Always
keep this in mind as you wander the
streets; close-ups are simpler and easier
to visually digest than endless large,
busy scenes with too much pictorial
Photograph by Robin Nichols information in them. These also made a
I think photographers often forget to zoom in and shoot the details in many subjects. nice double-page spread in a photo book
Large, bold images are fine, but if you see too many of them you might find it is I put together after the trip.
information overkill. Close-ups can be simpler and, in many cases, more to the point.

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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Congratulations! You’ve completed
this Photzy guide!

Robin Nichols is a UK-born If you liked this photography tutorial, check

photographer. He has spent the out this premium lighting guide to help
past 30 years in Sydney, Australia, you master light and produce amazing
where he began work as a photographs: Understanding Light Book Two
cameraman, then as a freelance
photographer.

He worked as a freelance writer

and then as a magazine editor for
several photography publications
for more than eight years. He also
ran his own publishing business,
producing two specialist magazines
- Better Photoshop Techniques and
Better Digital Camera magazine.

Aside from conducting photo tours and workshops, Robin

teaches photography, video, and post-processing classes
through the Centre for Continuing Education at Sydney
University.

His work can be seen online at IF YOU’D LIKE TO CONTINUE

Blog: www.robinnicholsworkshops.blogspot.com LEARNING AND IMPROVING
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