I have tried a few scenarios of presenting the building. First of all, the surrounding strongly reminded me of my one old alone walk in Bispebjerg, Copenhagen. It was a cold, hazy December night with snow slowly falling down and dimmed lights coming out of the windows. Somehow it made a strong impression on me and I wanted to translate this feeling into my rendering here. Thus, I knew I want to stay faithful to the surrounding buildings that inspired me, as well as the main building that is to be shown.
Basing on these initial guidelines, I put the scene in some testing. I noticed that the School of Architecture building looks much better from the distance than in the wide angle. That’s mostly due to the distortion of the curved facade in the closer perspectives as well as the absence of the most of the roof structure in them. Therefore, my decision regarding the camera placement was much easier. I had to exclude two viewpoints which seemed very interesting (ie. the one from the lower street with terrain stairs building some nice framing for the perspective and the one incorporating into its foreground the circular staircase on the square on the opposite side of the building) – they were too close and the building was too distorted in those angles. In the end, I chose the long shot that shows the entire building with the glimpses of its surroundings.
I tried some settings for the hazy night rendering (like in my initial impression) but they turned out to be distracting a viewer too much from the school building. Eventually, I ended up with some winter morning/noon mood. I had unwrapped the facade and painted the facades before doing all those aforementioned tests because I wanted its vivid hues to play the crucial role in the scene building.
