Seeing Space: Parallels Between Architecture and Photography

I’ve often felt that my love for photography and my life in architecture are interrelated. Both are rooted in seeing — in learning to notice the world more carefully, more patiently. Whether I’m holding a camera or sketching a plan, I’m chasing the same thing: a sense of balance between light, form, and emotion.

Architecture teaches you to think about how people move through space — how light falls on a wall at 4 p.m., how a narrow hallway opens into something unexpected. Photography is no different. The frame becomes a room, and every choice — where to stand, what to include, what to leave out — shapes how someone experiences that space. In both, composition is everything.

When I walk through a city or a quiet field with my camera, I find myself studying edges, proportions, and alignments just as I would on a drawing board. The rhythm of a façade, the negative space between buildings, or the way shadows stretch across a surface — these are lessons that architecture planted deeply in me. But where architecture is slow and deliberate, photography is immediate. It captures that fleeting moment when light and form are in perfect conversation.

Emotionally, both practices demand patience and humility. You can’t force a good photograph any more than you can force a good building. You wait, you observe, you adjust. Both are acts of listening — to the environment, to people, to light. And both reward curiosity over control.

Photography has, in many ways, made me a better architect. It keeps my eyes open when I’m not in the studio. It reminds me that light isn’t just something to measure — it’s something to feel. It reminds me that design isn’t only about creating new things but about noticing what already exists.

At their core, architecture and photography are both about framing life — giving shape to experience. One does it with structure and material, the other with light and time. But in both, the joy is the same: that quiet satisfaction of seeing the world just a little more clearly.