Honestly..... THIS is what it's all about. Got up at 2:30 this morning to drive to Indianapolis for sunrise. Sun rose behind clouds. Stood around for three hours waiting for clouds to break... all the time Wunderground predicting sunshine. Decide to throw in the towel as the forecast turns to mostly cloudy. Head back to Chicago. Pull over after 60 miles to fuel up and see a hint of blue on the eastern horizon.

Swear.

A lot!

Decide to turn around and drive back.

See below the difference between a crap morning and the clouds parting to yield a perfect day.

The insane frustration and the moment of triumph!

I swear i had almost the same situation yesterday. At morning some soft feather clouds - I decided to hit the road and drive to the point of destination. Took me about 1,5 hour. Guess what? At arrival it was just a matter of 30mins an the heavy clouds took over me. No Sun, no shadow, no contrast. I was kinda mad and tried to sit it out in the car with some good music. After 4 hours i gave up, drove back and at the half of the track i watched in my rear view mirror. Clouds broke up, in a silver gleamming with some great formations.

Should i pull over and drive back ?

- Huh, i took the way home and had a grat evening with friends but without some great pictures

sometimes i love bad weather. of course there is something what i call bad weather, but less than one might expect.
bad weather means for me boring weather and this can be a blue naked sky too, it depends a lot on the building and what
i want to show.

in this shot 2 weeks ago in berlin i waited app. 1 hour drinking a coffee, i waited cause the weather looked as if could change a bit. it got a tick brighter, rain decreased a bit, i went back to my lifting platform ( still raining a bit ) , went up app. 30 ft hight to the shooting position, mounted the camera and waited another 30 minutes having the camera on tripoid and protecting it from rain this time , than rain stopped some minutes, sun came out a little bit and i took the shot with the wet building and the wet streets. all this in app. 8 degrees temp.


i write in my estimations mostly a from - till span of shooting and editing time.
same price for both. this gives me and my clients space for weather and site changes.

Click to view attachment

First, nice image Rainer. Getting off the ground sure does make a world of difference! I love how it expanded the look of the street and surrounds over a ground level shot.

Second. I can't even begin to count the times I went to an outdoor location shoot in bad weather, when everyone wanted to cancel and had a scant period of superb atmosphere arrive. Not always mind you, but sometimes the gamble pays off.

The height seems to work really well as well as being raised off the ground helps eliminate that other variable of trying to photograph from street level through heavy traffic.

awesome picture and topic

The weather related difficulties that an architectural photographer faces are vaguely similar to those of the landscape photographer, but in an urban setting.

For this shot, I went to the outskirts of Barcelona. Alone, by train then on foot and tripod-less, in chili mid-april weather. After setting up the shot, I waited an hour and half for twilight to deliver a blueish cloudscape. Then for two minutes a beam of light shined through pink clouds. The next shot, with the expected twilight colors, isn't nearly as powerful.















Making the most of photoarchitectourism.

Cheers,
Pedro

PS: This is the happy ending story. A friend of mine, on the other hand, told me about how an old lady pushed his ladder while he was climbing the wall of a neighboring residence, on a photo assignment. She thought he was a crook, called the police and both ended up in a police station. The other side of architectural photography.

Even worse are aerials. I had a shoot last week of a remote site that is being re-developed by the architects. The weather was perfect friday, so we went ( over an hour's flying time each way ). Things were great until we arrived to find clouds at the site. The sun was shining a short distance away, so we circled for a while and waited until the clear spot moved over the site, then shot quickly. On the way back the skies were blue all the way!

I had an experience with this with an interior 3 weeks ago. I just knew that this interior would look great with strong sun light coming in in the morning but when we went to do it, full overcast. I took the shot with the overcast after waiting an hour for the clouds to break. Then, while setting up the next shot, the clouds broke and we had to quickly move all of the lights back to the lobby, set them up and take the shot before the sun disappeared again. I got it, but it can be so annoying trying to work with the clouds.

It's called Murphy's Law.
The amount of times,I had to cancel a shoot because of weather,even here in Australia,are substantial.
Best,
Willem.