“Our motto is ‘Architectural stories through
images’, which represents our way of
interpreting a visual. Visuals are about the
substance that is involved, the architecture and
how it relates to the lives of those who live
around it. Only time will tell if our interpretations
live up to reality. These stories help the viewer
interpret, apprehend and feel the spaces that
are being created. For example, the background
here mixes leisure and activities and of course
someone taking a photo with a selfie stick. In
order to make a great visual you must
understand how the brain interprets information
and what it expects to encounter, you must lead
the eye through a series of loops, controlled by
both technical and emotional qualities in any
piece. A great technical piece will not
necessarily make it a great artistic piece.”ACCORDING TO ARQUI9, THIS IS PROBABLY THE
MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF ANY IMAGESTORYTELLING SECRETS
TECHNIQUES HOW I MADE
06
INDIVIDUAL CORRECTIONS
The foreground has quite heavily contrasted trees, which
project dark shadows with a mix of light. This helps to frame the main
building’s form and gradually provide steps to lead our eye to it. Behind
the main building, in regards to the vegetation, we elevated the black
value with a Curves adjustment and then added more colour in the blue
channel to match the tint that the sky would project onto the vegetation.05
COLOUR CORRECT
Generally once we have the value set we
then adjust saturation values (generally creating less
saturation with a Desaturate adjustment layer) and
then colour-correct. As a very final touch we add a
dodge layer, which we paint black and then brush in
with little bits of light to emphasise.07
ADD EXTRA LIGHTING
We can also use this phase to add extra lighting effects, be it
dust or particles in the air, painted with a brush that has scattering
activated or simply painting the lens flare effect on bright spots with a
Soft brush. This can also be applied to water effect glare.08
FINAL GRADING
As with any film footage we usually add our final grading at the end. Grading is
one of our preferred phases, as it very quickly enables us to give [a] totally different feeling
to an image within a matter of seconds. We usually use a Hue/Saturation layer set to
Colorize and with the blend mode set to Soft Light. This will enable a very quick grade,
which we can then fine-tune through Color Balance and Curves adjustments.04
VALUE CHECK
We adjust the white and black points to
match the plate or depth values. For instance, the
further back in space an element is, the less contrast
and saturation it has, due to the haze andatmosphere in the scene. This of course can
vary in accordance with climate, time of day
and geography – that’s why having a solid
photo reference base is essential.